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Today's theme is Jazz.  Amusingly this includes both music and a character in Transformers.

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Today we went to the Charleston Food Forest and Coles County Community Garden, along with other errands.

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This new 'bamboo bioplastic' that outperforms traditional plastic breaks down in just 50 days

Researchers at China’s Northeast Forestry University and Shenyang University of Chemical Technology think they may have cracked the case on bamboo plastic.

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This poem came out of the October 7, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from rhodielady_47 and sponsored by janetmiles. It also fills the "talking dog" square in my 10-1-25 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. This poem belongs to the Adventures of Aldornia and Zenobia series. It follows "The Unretired Witch" so read that first for best results.

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This poem came out of the October 7, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by janetmiles. It also fills the "witches" square in my 10-1-25 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. This poem belongs to the Adventures of Aldornia and Zenobia series. Its sequel is "The Disappointing Daughter."

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janetmiles has sponsored "The Unretired Witch" and "The Disappointing Daughter." I'll get these posted as soon as I can.

I’ve been rereading Stephen King for comfort reasons, and I have a couple of observations. First, The Dead Zone—which posits political assassination as an actual solution to a potential presidential madman—hits a bit different these days. Second (and not unrelatedly), while I am happy enough to get the expanded version of The Stand, it was a huge mistake for King to try to change the setting from 1980 to 1990; random updated pop culture references can’t disguise the fact that America changed substantially in that decade, such that characters and settings that made sense in 1980 were no longer plausible in 1990. The teenaged, white Nick Andros would almost certainly not have used the word “Negro” to describe an old woman in 1990. The singer Larry Underwood would have different beliefs about music from the 70s, when he was a young child rather than a teen/early adult. From attitudes towards single mothers to how racism was expressed to the dumping practices of fabric mills, the revised version still reads like 1980, but with a mention of rap on the radio, and it’s not good.

Today is mostly sunny and mild.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/9/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 10/9/25 -- I spent a total of 1 1/2 to 2 hours gathering seeds at the Charleston Food Forest and Coles County Community Garden.  I am sooo tired, but I got a great haul. \o/

EDIT 10/9/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

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

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My immunotherapy infusion yesterday may have been my last!! I have a scan on Monday that will probably say that. Belovedest celebrated by cracking into the Strategic Redpop Reserve. This will mean much more leeway to leave town and such.

Colonoscopy results: mostly normal, one pre (not sure how many pre-s to put here) cancerous "lesion", and all of them removed. Repeat in two years, this time with Extended Prep. (My understanding of "lesion" and the medical definition may not align entirely well.)

Started the new injectable after the colonoscopy. I can definitely feel the impact. It remains to be seen exactly what kind. One of my friends has a new injectable too; she's getting some sinus clearance from it. Of all the random effects.

After the infusion, Belovedest and I trekked up-city to pick up a package for alexseanchai. All Pampered Chef, and a high proportion of likely goodies vs. likely duds. There were some varying scrub brushes. The utensil/knife scrub brush looks like dentures that are actually a scrub brush, but I can see that coming in handy. There was also a quarter-sheet pan with two eighth-sheet pans. And then we trekked back down when Belovedest realized they'd left their tablet at the cancer center. Freakin' ADHD. We're on The Assassins of Thasalon in our progress through Penric.

I have a smallish makeup hobby. Part of that is sometimes going all Weird Barbie on my face with eyeliner or whatever. Tonight I've convinced myself (via iridescent green eyeliner) that some kind of moon phase forehead jewelry might really slap.

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svgurl  has a list of fandom events, mostly holiday exchanges. 

The hidden Denisovan gene that helped humans conquer a new world

Ancient humans crossing the Bering Strait into the Americas carried more than tools and determination—they also carried a genetic legacy from Denisovans, an extinct human relative. A new study reveals that a mysterious gene called MUC19, inherited through interbreeding between Denisovans, Neanderthals, and humans, may have played a vital role in helping early Americans survive new diseases, foods, and environments.


Diversity is strength.

Fell down a rabbit hole of watching “people recreate the iconic Bad Apple music video on the wildest, most improbable devices” videos. (“Can it run Doom?” is so passe.)

Got any favorites of your own to rec? Here are mine:

• Bad Apple but it’s played over DNS
• Bad Apple but it’s inserted into Super Mario Bros
• Bad Apple but it’s on the screen of a TI-84 graphing calculator
• Bad Apple but it’s on Minecraft sheep
• Bad Apple but it’s on a series of physical hand-drawn flipbooks
• Bad Apple but it’s on a Soviet oscilloscope from the 1970s
• Bad Apple but it’s in the Windows 10 Task Manager
• Bad Apple but it’s in Google Maps
• Bad Apple but it’s on a Sansa Clip+ MP3 player
• Bad Apple but it’s pages in the Library of Babel
• Bad Apple but every frame is an AI-generated painting
• Bad Apple but Stable Diffusion tried to color each frame
• Bad Apple but a different attempt by Stable Diffusion
• Bad Apple but it’s chess pieces
• Bad Apple but it’s a particle-based fluid simulator
• Bad Apple but everything is triangles
• Bad Apple but it’s a GitHub contribution graph
• Bad Apple but it’s on a Christmas tree

Today is partly sunny and mild.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.  I heard a bluejay screaming but didn't see it.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/8/25 -- I did some work around the patio.

I saw a male cardinal in the forest garden.

EDIT 10/8/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 10/8/25 -- I gathered sunflower seeds and wild senna seeds from the gardens.

EDIT 10/8/25 -- I watered the irises, telephone pole garden and savanna seedlings, new picnic table, and old picnic table.

As it is almost suppertime, I am done for the night.

Mysteries with Queer Characters to Read During Mystery Series Week!

It’s Mystery Series Week, but we love queer mysteries so much that we didn’t restrict ourselves to just series. Join us for this list of 27 (!!) queer mysteries (more if you count the ones that ARE series!) our rec list contributors suggested for all your mystery reading needs!

I picked up The Epic of Bidasari (and other tales) during a book fair ages ago in trying to support a local publisher, Silverfish Books, though sadly since then said publisher has gone under, apparently due to business troubles during lockdown. The book is a 2012 republishing of a 1901 publication by The Colonial Press (actual name!) which was a translation work from Malay to English of the older text, though it's unclear if they also did the Malay transcription from the oral form.

I adore the 1964 black-and-white film Bidasari starring Sarimah and Jins Shamsudin. (Shockingly, I can't find an upload of the full film on youtube to share here!) It's because of that I picked up this book, and I really enjoyed reading the full English-translated poem, which makes up the meat of this book, though I do wish I had a Malay original as well because you can just SEE glimpses between the words of what the original was, plus as with all translations the vibes would just be different. Also, the dialogue of the Bidasari film is almost entirely in verse, and I would've loved to see if they'd ported anything over from the poem.

Bidasari is a folktale/fairytale about a princess, Bidasari, who is abandoned as a baby by her royal parents when they (the parents) are chased by a garuda and have to flee into the desert. Bidasari is rescued by a merchant of another kingdom, who prospers as he raises her. Bidasari grows up beautiful and kind and flawless (etc etc) which puts her in the radar of the queen, who is beautiful but not that beautiful, and fears that her husband the king will take Bidasari as his second wife if he sees her. So the queen has Bidasari brought to her and locks her up to abuse in the hopes of ruining her beauty, eventually seemingly killing her, but due to certain magical shenanigans Bidasari isn't dead dead, but only partly dead. Bidasari's body is returned to her merchant father, who puts her in a secret house-tomb in the woods that the king eventually stumbles upon while hunting.

Obviously there's some similarity to Snow White, and the filmmakers of the movie saw that, too, and made the queen a witch of sorts who has a magic mirror that she uses pretty much the same way as the Snow White queen does. But the biggest change, which surprised me, too, is that instead of Bidasari being the queen's stepdaughter, she's the queen's rival for the king's love, and that just makes so much sense! Of course that only works in a folktale setting where polygyny is a thing, and vanity is a good enough sin for these kinds of stories regardless, but the queen's intense, preemptive jealousy just feels more organic this way, which I thought was neat. Like, the queen created her own problems by targeting Bidasari, more or less. (The Bidasari movie has the love interest prince be the evil queen's stepson instead.)

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Good news includes all the things which make us happy or otherwise feel good. It can be personal or public. We never know when something wonderful will happen, and when it does, most people want to share it with someone. It's disappointing when nobody is there to appreciate it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our joys and pat each other on the back.

What good news have you had recently? Are you anticipating any more? Have you found a cute picture or a video that makes you smile? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your life a little happier?