conuly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
conuly) wrote2025-08-30 06:54 am
conuly) wrote2025-08-30 06:54 amStandards for signing up with ICE are so low
maybe it makes sense to undermine them from within? Oh, where's the sabotage manual when I want it?
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conuly (conuly) wrote2025-08-29 07:41 pm
conuly) wrote2025-08-29 07:41 pmLet's just pretend I posted this on International Left-hander's Day
Poll #33546 Left handers unite!
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 40
Which are you?
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hannah (hannah) wrote2025-08-27 10:31 pm
hannah) wrote2025-08-27 10:31 pm
Fidelity.
For no reason I'm capable of understanding, starting sometime yesterday, my iPhone and iPad stopped connecting to my home wifi. The network was there, the devices acknowledged it, and my desktop was always able to tap into it through the relevant connecting device. The desktop's too old to have inbuilt wifi capabilities, but the iPhone and iPad were new enough they've got it, except it wasn't in them. They kept saying the password was wrong. I checked on the wifi router provided by the phone and internet company and typed it in, several times, and neither device acknowledged it as correct. I tried the trick of having the devices forget about the network before trying to reconnect, and it didn't work.
Resetting the route managed it, somehow. I'd be better able to understand what happened if the desktop also didn't get it for a while, but it did, so I have to wonder where things got messed up. Because there was a problem that got fixed, and it wasn't a problem for everything.
Resetting the route managed it, somehow. I'd be better able to understand what happened if the desktop also didn't get it for a while, but it did, so I have to wonder where things got messed up. Because there was a problem that got fixed, and it wasn't a problem for everything.
conuly (conuly) wrote2025-08-28 07:32 pm
conuly) wrote2025-08-28 07:32 pmDW and Bluesky (and probably others)
are now going to block Mississippi IP addresses.
Link to DW explanation
Link to Tedium post on Bluesky
So, yay, piracy and VPNs all the way?
(I fucking hate this timeline, have I said that lately?)
Link to DW explanation
Link to Tedium post on Bluesky
So, yay, piracy and VPNs all the way?
(I fucking hate this timeline, have I said that lately?)
conuly (conuly) wrote2025-08-27 02:51 pm
conuly) wrote2025-08-27 02:51 pmWanton and dissipation
Them: If you’re familiar with the meanings of wanton and dissipation, could you please describe them in a way that will help me never confuse them with other words or forget their meaning?
Me: Oh, there is no way the comments to this post are going to be helpful.
And I was half right! I was just about the only person to give the asked-for definition of "dissipation". As predicted, everybody else used the science sense rather than the moral decay sense. What surprised me is that they also all defined the word "wanton" in terms of violence rather than sexual promiscuity.
Anyway, I said myself that dissipation (meaning debauchery) is an old-fashioned term and that I'm not quite sure how I even know that one off the top of my head, but then the next day I was re-reading Ancillary Justice and there it is, right in the first few chapters. Seivarden is in a bad state due to her dissipated lifestyle, and that's the word used to describe it. Huh. (But I think I already knew that word before I read the book for the first time.)
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Me: Oh, there is no way the comments to this post are going to be helpful.
And I was half right! I was just about the only person to give the asked-for definition of "dissipation". As predicted, everybody else used the science sense rather than the moral decay sense. What surprised me is that they also all defined the word "wanton" in terms of violence rather than sexual promiscuity.
Anyway, I said myself that dissipation (meaning debauchery) is an old-fashioned term and that I'm not quite sure how I even know that one off the top of my head, but then the next day I was re-reading Ancillary Justice and there it is, right in the first few chapters. Seivarden is in a bad state due to her dissipated lifestyle, and that's the word used to describe it. Huh. (But I think I already knew that word before I read the book for the first time.)
( Read more... )
hannah (hannah) wrote2025-08-26 09:48 pm
hannah) wrote2025-08-26 09:48 pm
Media collecting.
Reminding myself I want what's on the objects more than I want the objects themselves, I'm in the process of ripping my Fringe complete series box set so I can get around to watching it. I did the same for Friday Night Lights already, and I'm trying to tell myself I shouldn't keep the sets around even if I fall in love with the shows. It was great I was able to snag them so affordably. And I don't need them.
If there were still in-person fandom conventions, I'd bring them to a swap table or offer them up for a raffle, but we don't have such things anymore - at least not anywhere it's practical for me to travel to right now. It's a shame, because that kind of swap table mentality is one of the best for getting rid of stuff. How it's going to be picked up and taken home, and you don't have to believe anything else.
If there were still in-person fandom conventions, I'd bring them to a swap table or offer them up for a raffle, but we don't have such things anymore - at least not anywhere it's practical for me to travel to right now. It's a shame, because that kind of swap table mentality is one of the best for getting rid of stuff. How it's going to be picked up and taken home, and you don't have to believe anything else.
conuly (conuly) wrote2025-08-24 11:57 pm
conuly) wrote2025-08-24 11:57 pmAugust by Dorothy Parker
When my eyes are weeds,
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;
Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a flushed and amorous slattern,
With her dusty laces’ pattern
Trailing, as she straggles by.
******
Link
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;
Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a flushed and amorous slattern,
With her dusty laces’ pattern
Trailing, as she straggles by.
Link
Siderea (siderea) wrote2025-08-24 07:02 am
siderea) wrote2025-08-24 07:02 amEntry tags:
Untitled for Three Jigakkyu [music]
Yall, the bowed musical instruments have finally made it to the electronica party. This is the coolest damn thing. Audio required, video also extremely worth it if accessible. 3 min 17 sec.
2025 Aug 11: Open Reel Ensemble: "Tape Bowing Ensemble - Open Reel Ensemble":
ETA: I want to state for the record, contrary to what a lot of commenters on YT are saying, it is not that what is cool here is just how wackily innovative it is to use a reel-to-reel this way. The only reason this is going viral is because of how musically good it is; nobody would care about it otherwise, and I submit for evidence the half century plus of prior art of abusing reel-to-reel recorders in the name of music-making you have probably never heard of, because a lot of it wasn't very compelling as music so nobody ever brought it to your attention. What's most shocking here is how musical it is, and how they use the innovation to do something new in music recognizable as such. It isn't good because it's innovative; it's innovative because it's good.
As far as I am concerned, the great problem for electronic music has always been what I think of as the Piano Problem: the music is made by operating a machine, so there's a machine between the performer and the music. Great pianists master operating the machine so beautifully they make the machine disappear. But this is what makes piano playing hard. So much of what we love in music is its organicness, the aspects of it which are so beautifully expressive because of how intimately the performer's body interacts with the instrument.
Heretofore, the only ways to bring that kind of sound to electronic instruments were to use breath controlled midi controllers (electronic woodwinds), use an electromagnetic interface (e.g. theremin), or get really fantastic on keys. Or give up and embrace the mechanical nature of the instrument and use it for repertoire the excellence of which does not rest in expressiveness (q.v. Wendy Carlos' Bach recordings).
This instrument conclusively brings the organicness of bowing and all its delicate expressiveness to electronica. The result is simply gorgeous and I hope this creative vein is further mined.
2025 Aug 11: Open Reel Ensemble: "Tape Bowing Ensemble - Open Reel Ensemble":
磁気テープを竹に張って演奏する民族楽器「磁楽弓（じがっきゅう）」三重奏による調べですThis is a trio performance on the “JIGAKKYU,” a traditional folk instrument made by stretching magnetic tape across bamboo.
ETA: I want to state for the record, contrary to what a lot of commenters on YT are saying, it is not that what is cool here is just how wackily innovative it is to use a reel-to-reel this way. The only reason this is going viral is because of how musically good it is; nobody would care about it otherwise, and I submit for evidence the half century plus of prior art of abusing reel-to-reel recorders in the name of music-making you have probably never heard of, because a lot of it wasn't very compelling as music so nobody ever brought it to your attention. What's most shocking here is how musical it is, and how they use the innovation to do something new in music recognizable as such. It isn't good because it's innovative; it's innovative because it's good.
As far as I am concerned, the great problem for electronic music has always been what I think of as the Piano Problem: the music is made by operating a machine, so there's a machine between the performer and the music. Great pianists master operating the machine so beautifully they make the machine disappear. But this is what makes piano playing hard. So much of what we love in music is its organicness, the aspects of it which are so beautifully expressive because of how intimately the performer's body interacts with the instrument.
Heretofore, the only ways to bring that kind of sound to electronic instruments were to use breath controlled midi controllers (electronic woodwinds), use an electromagnetic interface (e.g. theremin), or get really fantastic on keys. Or give up and embrace the mechanical nature of the instrument and use it for repertoire the excellence of which does not rest in expressiveness (q.v. Wendy Carlos' Bach recordings).
This instrument conclusively brings the organicness of bowing and all its delicate expressiveness to electronica. The result is simply gorgeous and I hope this creative vein is further mined.
brithistorian (brithistorian) wrote2025-08-23 10:57 am
brithistorian) wrote2025-08-23 10:57 amEntry tags:
In which I rant here rather than start fights else-Internet
There are a couple of things I saw around the Internet over the last few days that have been really bothering me, but I don't want to go back there and start fights in other people's places, so I'm coming here to rant in my own place. Feel free to reply or not, whether you agree with me or not. I just need to get these things out of my system.
- One of my friends on Facebook made a post about how she took a ukulele lessen recently. She was very pleased with her accomplishment — in one hour she had learned 3 chords and learned to play a song. Someone else — I'm assuming one of her friends, apparently a guitar player — made a comment to her post that he thought the three chords she learned would transfer over to the top four strings on the guitar. She correctly told him that they wouldn't — which he may or may not have accepted, and I didn't stick around to find out — but at the same time I was sitting there fuming: Even if they would transfer so the fuck what? The ukulele is a valid music instrument in its own right, not some sort of training wheels to help one later change over to a guitar. Besides diminishing my instrument, I felt like he was diminishing my friend's accomplishment, but I didn't feel like I could say that in a way that wouldn't start a fight, so I'm coming to say it here.
- Over on Threads, a group of people who live in Minneapolis were complaining about people who live in the suburbs saying they live in Minneapolis, one of them even going so far as to compare it to stolen valor. I live in one of the first ring suburbs of Minneapolis and when — as I do on occasion — I say I live in Minneapolis, it's not intended as some sort of flex. It all boils down to some variant of "How important is it to me that this person knows the actual physical location of my house?" and "Do I think it's worth the time to explain to this person exactly where the suburb I live in it located?" If I think I'm talking to one of these Minneapolis people who's going to make an issue of it, I'll sometimes say "One of the first-ring suburbs," generally supplemented by the quadrant of the metro area. In general, unless the person is going to come to my actual house (which almost never happens), I feel no need to tell them exactly which suburb I live in and then explain where it is because they don't know.