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Today is partly sunny and mild.  It rained most of yesterday.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 11/22/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I've seen two squirrels running around the trees.

EDIT 11/22/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 11/22/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

 

The half-price sale in Polychrome Heroics will close at the end of Sunday.  The pool by fuzzyred will close late Saturday night, so if you're still planning to participate, now's the time. 

But I was flying back from the Bay Area on Wednesday, and catching up with things the last few days, and heading down to the Phoenix area on Monday for a Thanksgiving Week vacation, so it's now or never.

This past trip was to visit my brother and his family, and also to do crosswords and cryptics with his group, who I meet every Saturday morning on a Zoom-equivalent for puzzling; I was there in person two years ago and wanted to do it again. But since I was going to be in the area I coordinated with an OTW meet-up group for dim sum on Sunday and met several of my fellow tag wranglers and other volunteers, and then got together with hamsterwoman for a lovely afternoon of chatting and walking and sightseeing along the Embarcadero.

So, part of traveling is being on planes! And being on planes means lots of time for reading! I had been intrigued by a Yuletide promo post about a book duology, and though I didn't manage to get to it before Yuletide, I did find it at my library in time for this trip:

The Philosopher's Flight and The Philosopher's War by Tom Miller - this is an alt-history set in World War I with an odd kind of magic, "empirical philosophy", which involves drawing arcane sigils with different materials to do things like make plants grow faster, heal the sick, fly, and summon the wind. It's dominated by women, who are generally more talented at it, but the protagonist of the series is a young man who dreams of following in his mother's footsteps as a rescue and evacuation flier (literally, flying) for the military. Alt history and unusual magic systems are catnip for me, but I was a little worried that it being about the rare talented man in a woman's field would detract.

Actually, it was fun and funny, and inverted some sexist tropes and history in an entertaining way. Robert is not better than all the women, he's just pretty good, and better than most men. And seeing how the system is rigged against him in ways both overt and inherent holds up a mirror to real-world sexism: he has to work twice as hard to be considered half as good as a woman, he needs a special dispensation to study sigilry at Radcliffe, and a (female) general's recommendation to join the rescue corps, where he's called Sigilwoman 3rd Class, and addressed as "ma'am" - but eventually is regarded by the women around him as their "little brother", and distinguishes himself in his work as equal to his "sisters". A thoughtful treatment of politics and the military, too, and loads of unintended consequences wherever you turn. I enjoyed it!

What I've recently finished watching:

S3 of The Diplomat, but woohoo, that was a fun one. A little more relationship drama than I personally would have liked, but it was interesting to watch Kate basically being Hal while being oblivious to that fact, and also, people being shitty to each other while also acting in what they honestly perceived as being in the best interest of their country (or the world), and also, how actions have (often unintended, see above) consequences, and you just have to grit your teeth and deal. Also, can I just say how great it was to see a competent president? Especially a competent female president, who gives no fucks as to what she looks like to people who at the end of the day don't matter, for the important things. (Not that she's not flawed, but still. Better than the actual venial disaster we have.)

While I was at my brother's, we watched the French stop-motion animated comedy A Town Called Panic, which was an absurd fantasy-adventure delight. I laughed a lot! It was very weird! One of my nieces insisted I watch a couple of episodes of Bee and Puppycat with her, and - that was also very weird. I am not really sure what it is about! It is a cartoon about a girl and her possibly alien pet, who brings her to ... an interspacial temp agency? I may actually try to watch it more seriously this winter while riding the stationary bike, it's very pretty, and part of my ??? is that I couldn't hear the audio very well, but if I watch it at home at least I can use subtitles (and headphones).

We are now watching S4 of The Witcher.

What I'm playing now:

I finished Monument Valley, and have started poking at Monument Valley 2 (put it on my laptop and played a little while I was in California). I also have started playing Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, though I'm not sure I'm going to stick (heh) with it. It's really designed for a controller, so that's what I'm using (and the haptic feedback is nifty) but I also suck at using a controller, so my web-swinging movement is far from smooth and combat is mostly random button-mashing. I also feel like it's very distracting, with all of the CRIMES! I'm supposed to go stop while I'm just trying to get to my next quest!

So as I mentioned last time, B started playing Horizon Forbidden West and I've been looking over his shoulder every so often because I loved that game. Finally I decided...to start a NG+! Which I've never done. I never replay games! I tried to replay Dragon Age II and it annoyed me so much I didn't even get to Kirkwall. But I went right through the tutorial (fun!) and into Chainscrape, and..I might keep playing? We shall see! I've turned up the difficulty since I'm so buff and have so much gear. I think I need to look up how these things go...

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

What are the biggest moral dilemmas your country is facing now?


Privacy, body autonomy, democracy, and climate change.

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Today we made a smoothie with:

1 cup Pom pomegranate-blueberry juice
1 cup Brown Cow vanilla yogurt
1 banana
1/2 cup frozen strawberries
1/2 cup ice

The result is bright red-violet and on the thin side.  It has a deeper fruit flavor from the pomegranate -- a nice fall smoothie. 

Light has been hiding a magnetic secret for nearly 200 years

New research shows that light’s magnetic field is far more influential than scientists once believed. The team found that this magnetic component significantly affects how light rotates as it passes through certain materials. Their work challenges a 180-year-old understanding of the Faraday Effect and opens pathways to new optical and magnetic technologies.

Today is cloudy, rainy, and cool.

I fed the birds. I haven't seen any activity today.

The birdbaths are already full from the rain.

EDIT 11/21/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I've seen several sparrows and house finches at the fly-through feeder, which is basically a little roof over a tray of seed. I can see why they'd prefer it today.

EDIT 11/21/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Today's theme is Knitting.  You might also like my Hobbies: Knitting post with resources.

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These are the notes for "Trying to Be Better."

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This poem is spillover from the October 2025 crowdfunding Creative Jam. It was inspired by a prompt from readera. It also fills the "Do you trust me?" square in my 10-1-25 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by janetmiles. It belongs to the Frank the Crank arc in the Big One thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It follows "The Clearest Signal" and "Set on Continuous Improvement," so read those first or this won't make as much sense.

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These are the notes for "Set on Continuous Improvement."

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This poem is spillover from the October 2025 crowdfunding Creative Jam. It was inspired by a prompt from readera. It also fills the "Dark Side" square in my 10-1-25 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by janetmiles. It belongs to the Frank the Crank arc in the Big One thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It follows "The Clearest Signal," so read that first or this won't make as much sense.

( Read more... )

The Switch is a tiny little 1-season, 6-episode comedy about a trans woman living in Vancouver. It’s part quirky workplace comedy, part quirky roommate comedy, and part “she moves in with her ex who’s secretly an assassin, who spends the whole season trying to dodge the investigation for an executive they recently killed, but, like, in a funny way.”

Half the cast is trans, a ton of the crew is trans, so it’s a big part of the show in a way that feels genuine and natural. Even though the show in general has a fun heightened-reality vibe. (The original Kickstarter campaign mentions a sorceress character. She’s not in the final cut at all, which I kinda suspect was a broader “oops, we’re trying to stuff too much in 6 episodes, we need to cut the magic subplot” decision. But, listen, if they had made a second season where Sabrina the Teenage Witch moved in down the hall, it wouldn’t feel out-of-place.)

I watched the whole thing for free on Tubi! There are some other streaming options on their official website. They also just straight-up tell you “want to be a pirate? here are the torrents” — but give them some ad revenue, if you can.

—

So I guess I’m a Hazbin Hotel fan now, huh?

FFA did a rewatch of season 1 in the leadup to season 2, so I rewatched it along with that. Then ended up watching S2 as it came out (dropping two episodes a week), because now I’m invested enough that I didn’t want spoilers.

(Couldn’t totally avoid them, because…listen, there is a deep vault of Fandom Lore here, which I have never actually looked at. So there were regular comments like “sure, we already basically knows Plot Point X, because of the leaks/interviews/character designs posted on DA in 2012” where I had no idea about X at all. It worked out fine, though, because sometimes the fandom was wrong! And I had no way to predict when.)

All the music is good, and some of it is great. Their animation budget must be incredible, and you can see it paying off — Vox Populi showcases some amazing dynamic tracking shots, and the reprise Vox Dei has them just showing off. It has the same overstuffed pacing as S1, where they’re trying to pack about a thousand different character beats into eight episodes — there are setups that never get payoffs, and payoffs to things that weren’t actually set up — but the central arc of the season does hold together, and all the individual moments are fun to watch.

There’s a recurring theme of “look, this is shameless pandering to the iddiest of fandom desires” that goes so hard, you have to respect it. The saddest woobie with the softest vulnerable heart gets manhandled in all-new ways!

The most Tumblr Sexyman spends multiple episodes tied up and gagged, strapped to a chair, in his jealous rival’s bedroom!

There are moments that honestly feel like “the show won’t bother going too deep into this, because they know they can just toss the idea in front of their audience, and wait for a million fics to fill in the gaps.” And given the size of the fandom, I don’t think they’re wrong, either.

…The size of the fandom means there’s an overwhelming number of Youtube videos. But a lot of the ones I’ve watched are, well. Bad? Like “hidden details you missed” but it just lists basic plot points, or “fixing the character designs” but it’s fixating on things that aren’t problems.

Have a few recs, because these deserve to be watched without viewers having to dig them out of the heap first:

• An Exhausted Defense Of Angel Dust (posted before S2, has some heavy discussion about sexual assault)
• The Character Design of Hazbin Hotel (also posted before S2, the only video about the designs where I haven’t gotten exasperated and stopped watching)
• Collider Ladies Night interview with Vivziepop (released after S2, plenty of spoilers)

Music adjacent to economics

On BBC Newshour yesterday, I heard a story (which I can't find online at the moment) about Kraftwerk's instruments and equipment going up for auction. Besides the historical value because of their association with Kraftwerk, many of these items were inherently valuable because they're rare examples of early electronic musical instruments. The vocoder used on "The Robots" sold for about $200,000. The expert they talked to said that there were only about 20-30 surviving examples of this model of vocoder. I hope that these instrument went to musicians who will put them to use and not to tech bros who'll put them on a shelf.

Music adjacent to politics

Due to rising tensions between China and Japan (which I am forced to admit that I was unaware of), one of the cultural disputes going on between the countries is a petition in Japan asking Aespa member Ningning (who is Chinese) not to come to Japan. At the same time, Japanese performers who have built a portion of their career in China have been going out of their way to express pro-China feelings. I'm going to have read more about this situation. If any of you have a link to an article that explains what's going on, I'd appreciate it.

Music adjacent to fandom and statistics

In an article related to Blackpink members' performance at the Grammys, Rolling Stone referred to Blackpink as "(without a doubt) the biggest K-pop group in history, and has been for years." So of course ARMY (BTS's fandom) turning out in force, coming for Rolling Stone and bringing sales records, number of awards won, and chart performamce. the biggest K-pop group in history, and has been for years.) Within six hours, Rolling Stone had revised their article to refer to Blackpink as “the biggest K-pop girl group.” (A characterization that ONCE really ought to have something to say about.)

Music adjacent to bad machine translation

Weki Meki's Kim Doyeon won a Blue Dragon award (which seems to be the Korean equivalent of the Oscars), and her appearance on the red carpet caused quite a stir. The headline on one website uniquely expressed it by saying "Kim Do-yeon, Audrey Hepburn Reincarnation... a person who causes a single disease". I knew this was some sort of translation error, and asking the question on Threads led someone to clear it up for me. Apparently what they were trying (and failing) to say is that she is triggering an obsession for short bob haircuts.

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fandomtrees posts have been going up, and mine was in the most recent batch, yay! This is one of my favourite events of the season (next to Yuletide) - I loved fandom_stocking back in the day, and this is still just as much fun.

Here's my tree, and this is what I'm requesting this year:

• Grimm
• 镇魂 | Guardian (TV)
• Grimm/Guardian crossover
• 镇魂 | Guardian RPF
• Legend of the Seeker
• Sherlock (BBC)
• 绅探 | Detective L
• 山河令 | Word of Honor, 天涯客 | Faraway Wanderers
• Once Upon a Time in Wonderland
• Chinese fic recs
• food or cooking icons

Hoping to see some of you there too! Especially since this is one of those events where you're doing people a favour by signing up - the more requests there are, the more other people can find someone to create something for. :D

ETA: Sign-ups here!

Earth's magnetic field has a weak spot — and it's getting bigger, putting astronauts and satellites at risk

This could be bad news for satellites and spacefarers.

A weak spot in Earth's protective magnetic field is growing larger and exposing orbiting satellites and astronauts to more solar radiation, according to more than a decade of measurements by three orbiting observatories.

Today is cloudy and cool.  It drizzled a bit yesterday and last night.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a large mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 11/20/25 -- I planted 6 pots of switchgrass, 6 pots of sideoats grama, and 4 pots of river oats in the prairie garden.  These are pots I started from seed earlier in the year, but then it got too hot and dry to plant them.  While some had died, others had surprisingly robust rootballs in their little pots, and a few had wisps of green at the crown.  :D
 
EDIT 11/20/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 11/20/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.