Brinens and Things

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: food, (arguably) illness, (arguably) heights] I have officially survived my twenties

[cw: illness] Variolation, part 4: Secondhand [three comments, one of which is new]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by itsbenedict) A day in the life of a Tumblr user.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by oak23) The importance of ego-syntonic clothing.


[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by nenya_kanadka) How to make Wikia actually usable (and Dreamwidth even more usable).


[cw: illness, medical, (fairly mild) venting] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by cordeliaflyte) Fantasies about easy solutions to medical problems: not always pleasant.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by eightyonekilograms, though also kind of jv) Tumblr Backup Awareness Week, and a modernised version of tumblr-utils. (Though I ran into enough problems getting the python3 version of tumblr-utils working that I eventually gave up and went back to python2.)


[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by thedarlingone) More on the mobile-accessibility updates to Dreamwidth.


[cw: nsfw text] [Dreamwidth; Wayback crawling forbidden] (OP by porthole) The distinction between fetishes that can be done in real life and those that cannot (and the grey areas between).


[arguably cw: apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by ladiesloveduranduran) Which of these U.S. cities would you be most willing to live in?


[cw: illness, (arguably) poison] [Updated part of WordPress thread (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges; partly in respose to keynes-fetlife-mutual) Nipping colds in the bud (maybe) with zinc lozenges. [three comments, two of which are new]


[cw: illness, vomit, unsanitary] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by toasthaste; in response to robustcornhusk) Norovirus prevention tips.


[cw: sexism, embarrassment squick] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by RaxKingIsDead) Accidental street harassment.


[cw: corporate bullshit, (arguably) government bullshit] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by JoshGreenberg27) How to get government-funded U.S. tax preparation. (It's still not 100% clear, but it looks like probably *not* for non-residents. On the ""bright"" side, I'm below the income threshold to have to file at all for 2023, and there's no further stimulus checks to claim by doing it anyway.)


[Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by gummybugg; mostly in response to sacrificedtoatree) I have unlocked a fiction-writing skill tree! [two comments]


[arguably cw: guns] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by trailertrashin) "The Glass Eye - Adult Greeting Cards": a real store that really exists, somehow.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by whatcha-thinkin) Assuming you had access to perfect medical care at no additional cost, which of these fixes would you want most?

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Links:

[strong cw: illness] [Patreon; Wayback] (by Violet Blue; h/t siderea) A list of COVID-19 resources, consisting largely of people doing their best to navigate things on their own because God knows there are no trustworthy authorities left on this. I bought a $4 bottle of store-brand mouthwash (contains cetylpyridinium chloride) because of this post: I figure it's an extremely low-risk bet.

On a similar though shorter/narrower note, https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/805203.html

(Update from January: ...if someone who *doesn't* now have a history of COVID infection (or who can otherwise psychologically handle it) can pick through all the stuff in Violet's news roundups about Post-Acute Sequelae Even Worse Than Previously Believed to get at the actionable advice, I would appreciate it)


[cw: illness] [Absolutely Maybe; Wayback] (by Hilda Bastian) Researchers have not given up on creating a COVID vaccine with sterilising and/or durable immunity! Things may still improve.


[cw: corporate bullshit] [PCMag; Wayback] (by Chloe Albanesius; h/t Violet Blue) Obituaries for tech products and services that were shut down in 2023.


[Youtube; Invidious] (by Pope Kallisti; h/t blazingdarkness) A MIDI conversion of "Bring Me to Life".


[Live Science; Wayback] (by Victoria Atkinson) I told somebody in a nuclear-vs-solar argument a while back that I'd care less about solar if ordinary citizens could get household-scale nuclear batteries. There has been non-zero progress towards this.


Two laugh-rule entries:
[Beware The Shadows; Wayback] (by Brett J. Talley) The 56 best/worst analogies written by high school students (or, fairly likely, ""high school students""). (I've seen a lot of these before, but not all of them.)

My favourite is "Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph."


[brr; Wayback] (by Anonymous; h/t Jenn) Showering at the South Pole. (This whole blog is amazing, though usually more in a "wow, Antarctica is such a place" way than a "funny" way.)

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: (fairly strong) illness, venting, death] The one about Mom coming down with a fever

[cw: illness, medical, food] Status update, morning of 2023-08-01 [three comments]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by lakevida) The many meanings of a novelty hat.

[cw: nsfw text, (arguably) drugs, (arguably) apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by oligetcetera) Superstimuli and the oncoming future.

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Links:

[cw: (strong) illness, fire, apocalypse] There's a lot of chaff in plaguepoems@mastodon.social (...not that I can blame them, trying to write a poem on the same subject every weekday for years on end), but here's a selection of my favourites from the past couple months:

https://mastodon.social/@plaguepoems/110822170645699645:

In block letters at the top
of the hand sanitizer station
were the words
“protect yourself”
but the dispenser itself
was broken and empty
which I really must say
felt like some kind of metaphor.

https://mastodon.social/@plaguepoems/110623194611543597:

I saw a warning
from the department of health
urging residents “to take
appropriate precautions
as smoke
from Canadian wildfires”
is once more making the air
unhealthy to breathe
so if someone asks me
which airborne threat
my mask is for
I will simply say “all of them.”

https://mastodon.social/@plaguepoems/110571904159328242:

She tells me
that at this point
it would take a miracle
not to catch it again
and it’s not that I disagree
but that I believe
there are points in time
when if you are hoping
for a miracle
you have to make it yourself.

https://mastodon.social/@plaguepoems/110573627092710431:

I know a historian
who says
during the pandemic
and means by that
the past.

I know a doctor
who says
during the pandemic
and means by that
the present.

And
I know an epidemiologist
who says
during the pandemic
and means by that
the future.

[cw: illness] [CDC; Wayback] "Locally Acquired Malaria Cases Identified in the United States".

[cw: food] [NPR; Wayback] (by Allison Aubrey) Meanwhile, in good news, cell-cultured chicken has been approved for sale in America! It's at a fancy restaurant in San Francisco and costs if-you-have-to-ask-you-don't-want-to-know, but computers were once prohibitively expensive too.

[Sourcehut; Wayback] (by Ploum) Offpunk: an offline-first web browser.


Laugh-rule entries:
[Substack; Wayback] (by Moly)

[cw: drugs]

Yunnan: MUSHROOMS, people going to the ER because of MUSHROOMS, people getting out of the ER to continue eating MUSHROOMS, HALLUCINOGENIC MUSHROOMS. It’s the Colorado of China, if instead of marijuana, you had MUSHROOMS.

[Mastodon; Wayback] (by compositor@wayland.social)

Welcome to Wayland.social: the successor to X.com.

(I speak *just enough* Linux jargon to understand that this is funny.)

Comments on my own posts:

Today's the day! It's happening! [one comment, *including* the postscript because the postscript was written late enough to be easily missed]

[cw: (strong) fire, unreality, (mild) illness] Happy...new...year? [one comment, not counting the postscript]

Today's the day, part ~2: House Community Grid

[cw: bugs, (fairly mild) death, (mild) unsanitary)] The one about fly math [one comment on Tumblr]

English is a bullshit language (like all the others)

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: food, (fairly mild) apocalypse, (arguably) poison] [Substack; Wayback] (OP by Nicholas Weininger) Induction stoves vs gas stoves vs electric-coil stoves. [two comments]

[cw: (strong) food, (arguably) nsfw text] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by andaisq; h/t moral-autism) Sociological specfic about a world where people view food with the same sense of profundity and privacy with which we view sex.

[cw: illness, needles (picture in Tumblr version, but not in WordPress version)] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by syellowtails) The latest additional info on COVID-19 bivalent vaccine timing, mostly but not exclusively regarding the United States. (The most recent thing I've since heard is that, while the Ontarian government continues to *recommend* six-month intervals for most triage groups, it's possible to get a vaccine dose only three months after your previous one with a bit of additional hoop-jumping.)

[cw: poverty, illness, (arguably) venting] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by Lucy Liu) Updates from future-me on how my situation has changed since 2018. [three comments, one of which is new]

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by snakestack) The seat of a computer's soul.

[cw: venting, (mild) poison, (arguably) illness, (arguably) scrupulosity] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by albertvancouver) Unrelatable complaints about city design.

[cw: discourse, unsanitary, aging, medical] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by boeing747) *Extremely* unrelatable complaints about the "oversanitization of popular media".

[cw: food, embarrassment squick, amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by robustcornhusk) Way(s) to make Jewish apple cake, and how they've evolved over time.

[cw: nsfw text]
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[cw: nsfw text] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by cryptotheism; in response to sigmaleph) I was planning to wait for this roundup post to talk about the above, but I was having too many emotions and they leaked out into a post. Sorry for leaking my emotions onto your post, Sofi. [two comments]

[cw: illness, (arguably) discourse, (arguably) amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by discoursedrome) The past, present, and future of public mask cosplay.

[cw: food, (arguably) discourse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) Excuses for holidays. [two comments]

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Links:

[cw: food, (arguably) trypophobia]
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[Imgur] (h/t Sonata) A book with a built-in lectern.

[cw: (fairly mild) trypophobia, (arguably) body horror] [Twitter; Wayback] (by jonty; h/t Xom) Bugfix for multiocular O.

Three laugh-rule entries:
[Twitter; Wayback] (by Foone; h/t ericvilas) Can gender run Doom? For that matter, can visual static run Doom? (I won't spoil the final punchline, but do read to the end. I think I've even coaxed the Internet Archive into making their version readable start-to-finish.)

[Youtube; Wayback] (by Lou & Peter Berryman) A car drove by blaring "Sweet Home Alabama", and it got me thinking about this song again (it's not "Sweet Home Alabama").

[cw: corporate bullshit] [Mobile Syrup; Wayback] (by Jonathan Lamont)

Locking the doors, on the other hand, will probably just frustrate customers (and if they’re going into a Rogers store, chances are they’re already pissed off).

Comments on my own posts:

[none suitable for this section]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by tentacion1999: I suspect it was actually stolen from some non-Tumblrite, but I was unable to track down who) Shadows cast by the sun shining directly downward (not *necessarily* at the equator).

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by argumate) Matt Levine is in Hell and we are all just watching; recounting the story of my own brushes with cryptocurrency.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by transgenderer) Terra Ignota characters and the workings of Ada Palmer's mind.

[cw: food] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by feotakahari) Concerning and/or intriguing ideas for pizza toppings.

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Links:

[cw: bugs (with pictures)] [ScienceNews; Wayback] (by Betsy Mason) The sensorium of jumping spiders.

[Forbes; Wayback] (by Ethan Siegel) There are two subtly different kinds of shoelace knot, and one of them is much more prone to coming loose than the other. Turns out I have been using the wrong one: I'll have to try another practice hike now that I know, although I'm pretty sure *some* of my issues are in fact from the shoelaces getting old and stretched-out.



There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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Comments on my own posts:

The one about Signal [four comments]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by reasonableapproximation) Radical self-expression through clothing.

[cw: embarrassment squick] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges; partly in response to sigmaleph) The confusing proliferation of names in Worm. [two comments, three if you count the tags]

[cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by BagelofDeath) Honest Chinese food reviews from a Chinese restaurant owner. (Also, advice on how to get good chicken fingers in Canada.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by grayestofghosts) Sometimes reading less is a reasonable response to changing circumstances.

[cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by moral-autism) Some types of professionally preserved foods we highly recommend trying.

[maybe cw: stalking] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by nerviovago; in response to plain-dealing-villain and moral-autism) Hiding secret passageways inside fake clothes dryers.

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Links:

[cw: nsfw text, (mild) death] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (by arihi) A new repository for mind-control erotica, one that is *not* built on 90's tech with 90's limitations.

[Rock Paper Shotgun; Wayback] (by Nate Crowley) I thought this was going to be about priest-based Age of Empires builds, but the thing it actually is is neat too.

Three laugh-rule entries:
[Bloomberg; Wayback crawling forbidden] (by Matt Levine)

Or combine the last two approaches: “At the end of each trading day from now on, the number of Tesla shares will be adjusted, via split or reverse split, such that each day’s closing price is $420.69.” A share of Tesla could represent a variable percentage interest in the company, but always be worth $420.69. Elon you can live this dream if you want it enough.

[Kiwix; Wayback] (by Stéphane Coillet-Matillon)

I wish I could tell you how we did it, but it involved some C++, Typescript, and sacrificing a few chicken. Only two of these three worked, and there’s still some discussion about which.

[cw: politics] [The Guardian; Wayback] (by Lauren Aratani)
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There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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Comments on my own posts:

Comment and Link Roundup: October 21, 2020

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Comments on other people's posts:

(This post was made on June 16th, but I overlooked it while making the previous roundups.) [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by gnabrie) I do know what "burning CDs" means, and someday I might actually have a reason to do it again.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by maryellencarter) Extensions of the self.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by voxette-vk) Big 5 personality tests. [two comments]

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Links:

Laugh rule:
[Memory Alpha; Wayback] The continuity section of the article on one of the least continuous Voyager episodes (and that's saying something).

Tuvok mistakenly has his commander pip in the past. He did not earn this promotion until the fourth season episode "Revulsion". Although this is technically a continuity error, it is actually consistent as Tuvok was mistakenly shown wearing a commander's pip throughout the first half of season one.

{{Also:}}

This brings the total number of torpedoes confirmed to have been used by Voyager over the course of the series to 66, a total which exceeds the irreplaceable complement of 38 that had been established by Chakotay in the first-season episode "The Cloud".

There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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Comments on my own posts:

[cw: what it says on the tin (no pictures)] Recipe: Chocolate Nut Torte

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: venting] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by yvannairie) Understaffing bullshit.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by sigmaleph) What to do when a public holiday falls on a Sunday.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by little-brisk) Various ways to back up a Tumblr.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by sigmaleph) Mathematical (and other) mnemonics.

[cw: amnesia, arguably unreality] (Note: the Tumblr reverse-post-order glitch continues.) [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by reasonsmysoniscrying; in response to maryellencarter) Minor precognition, or so your brain insists.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by sigmaleph) Stratford-based news broadcasters won't tell you what Justin Bieber is famous *for*, but by God is he from Stratford.

(I've decided that tag rambles are a substantial enough contribution to be worth including.) [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by minatokun) "Accounting majors, who hurt you?"

(Note: I do not actually *endorse* the claim that people imposing [selection pressure for accounting talent] on my *ancestors* are harming *me* (though I can see why someone might argue it, and certainly it was harming *them*). Personally I've been rather enjoying having won accounting in the lottery of fascinations, *especially* because it is--by the standards of the general population--a fairly rare prize: people keep being appreciative of and impressed by my contributions, and it's nice to feel like a Valued Member of Society.)

((A little while ago I impressed *the Dean of Business* while chatting with her about US-expat-friendly investment strategies, which was quite the ego boost.))


[cw: heteronormativity, amnesia] [Dreamwidth; Wayback crawling forbidden] (OP by hebethen) Horrified screaming regarding the view of sexuality a character in "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" espouses.

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Links:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by gdgdbaby) Secret Santa compliment meme! Here is my thread.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by bobacupcake; h/t consumptive-sphinx) Art thieves vs Disney.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by Carl Muckenhoupt; h/t prokopetz) I'm told that this game is not for newcomers to the genre, so perhaps I will not actually play it, but there is just something so satisfying about reciting the blurb:

Finally, here you are. At the delcot of tondam, where doshes deave. But the doshery lutt is crenned with glauds.

Glauds! How rorm it would be to pell back to the bewl and distunk them, distunk the whole delcot, let the drokes uncren them.

But you are the gostak. The gostak distims the doshes. And no glaud will vorl them from you.

(As for the experience of attempting to *understand* it, it reminds me rather of reading French. "[???] the card on your head and walk [???] [???] the table. If it doesn't fall, [lose?] $1000."

(When we salvaged our bilingual version of that game, the English and French decks had gotten all jumbled together, and rather than sift them out we just went "what the hell, it'll be educational" and played with a shuffled English/French deck.))


Laugh rule:
[cw: unsanitary, violence] [Rock Paper Shotgun; Wayback] (by Nate Crowley)
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(I think I'm going to have to keep an eye on this guy.)