Patrice Jetter is a force of nature. She’s joyous in her clothes and her hobbies (sewing, painting, model railroading) and her confidence in small acts of kindness. She found love with Garry Wickham and they want to marry. They can’t afford to because they’re both disabled. Marriage would end their access to US Federal health insurance and income support.
Grady Hillhouse, PE is a civil engineer who’s expanded that professional credential into a media empire:
I look forward to his 20-minute videos twice a month at PracticalEngineeringChannel. He explains crucial infrastructure—water and sewage systems, power distribution grids, transportation—with luscious stock footage and homey see-through models he cobbles together in his garage.
I strongly recommend his Valentine’s Day contribution: An Engineer’s Love Letter to Cable-Stayed Bridges
( stream here with autocraptions (Grady's voice matches Google’s autocraption algorithms) )
I agree that cable-stayed bridges are exquisitely beautiful—they bring the gracious sweep of sailboats back to our bodies of water. Their simple central towers hold a fan of cables to suspend the roadway. As Grady explains, they’re faster and cheaper to build as well as easier to maintain.
Grady doesn’t go into the history, which begins centuries ago and accelerates in the past 50 years. Thanks to excellent PR, I assumed they were originated by Spanish architect-engineer Santiago Calatrava. Close to home, he used similar technology on the 2001 extension to the Milwaukee Art Museum. This STRUCTURE magazine article explains how wrong I was--they cite 1615 for the first cable-stayed bridge!
Have you seen a cable-stayed bridge? Is there another infrastructural design that makes you grin?
And if you’re wondering what he’s talking from 0:17 to 0:30? 5 other geeky YouTubers
Destin = SmarterEveryDay
Grey = CGPGrey
Matt = numberphile
Vi was @vihart.youtube but the content is offline
Alec = TechnologyConnections
Help Me Host a Watch Part for Your Fat Friend
I loved this excellent documentary about Aubrey Gordon, fatness, family, the complexities of change, and the messy feelings we hold about our bodies. Over six years, director Jeanie Finlay follows Gordon from anonymous blogger yrfatfriend in 2016 to bestselling 2020 writer of What We Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Fat and beloved Maintenance Phase podcaster with an audience of millions.
Aubrey Gordon urges a paradigm shift in how we view fat people and the fat on our own bodies. I cheered and cried while watching the movie, as it shows Gordon’s strength (and love of her body in water) while also demonstrating her family’s ambiguous support and documenting the abuse she experiences daily, both online and off. It’s got pro captions and audio description (but no AD in the trailer).
Trailer on YouTube https://youtu.be/lodyin_6x3c
( stream it here )
I want to host a free online watch party, but I’ve never done this. I’m willing to subsidize the license fee. Are you the tech whiz who can help make this happen?
The tasks I imagine:
If you have experience organizing asynchronous, time-limited, online movie showings, and are willing to help spread Aubrey Gordon’s message, please let me know — here or via DW’s direct messaging.
"History Hates Lovers" is a great vid fresh from Escapade Con's vidshow. owl_coffee splices TV, movie, and documentary footage to
oublaire's great song, to confront the systematic refusal to acknowledge queer love from historians, literary critics, and canon-tenders.
At Archive of Our Own https://archiveofourown.org/works/62700205
No captions -- ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oublaire posted a lyric video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lve0chiuucm
or they're viewable at the crowd-sourced lyrics site
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/oublaire-history-hates-lovers-lyrics.html
Yet again, a fanvid connects me to a great song -- it went viral on TikTok back in 2021. I’m always up to the minute!
…historians will call them
Close friends, bеsties, roommates, colleagues
Anything but lovers
History hates lovers
Sidekicks, family, good pals, buddies
Anything but lovers
History hates lovers
thanks, cathexys!
Skyview skyview.social lets you view and share Bluesky threads without needing an account. It offers a tree view, as well as an unrolled (all replies) and embed (haven’t tested it). Plus bots to save all of those; claims to track nothing.
I’d offer an example but even the briefest time on Bsky today has crashed my news wall like woe.
Excellent tool for managing time zone information https://dateful.com
The link you create a link automagically translates an event’s time to the user’s current time zone and day. When you create a free account, you can edit those links.
For example, a Media & Disability Communication Online Con
Seen on electric signboard on US Highway 12/18 E just south of Madison, 23 November 2024
Make it to deer camp safely buckle up
resonant revises John Henry for the modern day:
The Ballad of John Henry's CEO
You can't fight fate, gotta automate,
Keep the cost of production down, lord, lord,
The cost of production down.
First published in 2012, still relevant as fuck.
I’ve always known that the most stressful equipment failure is when something breaks on my powerchair.
Previously, I would have put computing equipment in second place, but today I learned a new contender: when my tea kettle won’t turn on! Thankfully MyGuy recognized I was in anxious mode, and the store had a replacement, and all is well.
Well, all is .... I have tea.
The MacMost site offers bite-sized tech help for Apple users. Even though I’ve been using Apples since 1984, I always learn something there. Recently, Gary offered 36 ways to type more easily on the iPhone keyboard. Transcript and video at https://macmost.com/36-iphone-keyboard-tips.html
I learned three things that made me happy. Writing them down helps me remember, so here are the summaries:
( Specific advice for iOS, general approach may also apply to Android )
Do you have any tricks to make mobile Dreamwidth posting easier?
Thanks, pauraque for giving me S for this six-question meme.
Something I hate
scented shampoo, soap, or similar substances. Fragrances like these trigger coughing fits and sometimes migraines. Weirdly, I developed this sensitivity after I quit smoking 10-15 cigarettes/day.
Something I love
sencha green tea, in particular Telsaan Sencha Spring Shizuoka, tragically out of stock
Somewhere I have been
Skópun, Sandoy, Føroyar (Faroe Islands). more about that trip
In 1971, I visited my sister & her husband for two weeks. He was studying Skópun and its people for his PhD in anthropology. She was studying everything in sight. My sister wrote a novel about it and my former-brother-in-law wrote several scholarly books. I took many wild ferry rides, snacked on skerpikjøt (fermented lamb) and turranfisk (fermented fish), and admired the beauty and strangeness of these tiny islands in the middle of the Atlantic. This was decades before the first undersea roundabout connected most of the Faroe Islands with roads.
Somewhere I would like to go
Shetland Islands, Scotland or Svalbard, Norway, especially during midnight sun season.
Someone I know
sasha_feather! I introduced her to a disability rights framework at WisCon. She enthusiastically joined in and succeeded me as WisCon Access Chair. She introduced me to Stargate Atlantis thence LJ thence DW fandom. We’ve had weekly lunches almost continuously for more than a decade.
Favorite movie
I'm drawing a complete blank. I loved Miyazaki's Spirited Away when it first came out--I should rewatch and see if still shines.
Want to play? Raise your hand for a letter.
Folk singer Jesse Welles hellswelles wrote a great song about why companies like United Healthcare are horrible:
You paid for the paper,
you paid for the phone,
you paid for everything you need
to deny what you’re owed.
Play on YouTube or stream it ( here )
I grew up in the 60s, when protest music was played on commercial radio. In the 70s, I played rhythm guitar and sang alto in several protest bands. We played at rallies and on picket lines, as well as small clubs in my town. Sharing a song with a crowd feeds my soul.
Any protest music that’s speaking to you right now?
I’m seeing more progress pride flags flying in my neighborhood. In the poll, I’m using “queer” in the broadest possible sense: any (sexual or gender) (orientation or preference). The poll is anonymous—even I can’t see who voted how.
When you see this flag flying on an unknown residence, what meaning do you take away?
Someone queer lives there
36 (51.4%)
Someone who lives there has a queer family member
20 (28.6%)
Someone lives there and wishes to show support for queer folks, without any indication of the resident’s queer status
57 (81.4%)
Someone thinks the flag is pretty
2 (2.9%)
Someone wants to say, “let’s queer the universe, motherfuckers, cause the status quo is woeful.”
29 (41.4%)
See my answer in comments
5 (7.1%)
Ticky?
mdbear led me to Switching.Software, a site that offers free, open-source alternatives to the services run by billionaires who are making bad policy decisions. (Whistles loudly to blot out discussions of the choices they’re making)
solarbird explains how Mastodon and Bluesky users can follow each other through a "bridge"
https://solarbird.dreamwidth.org/2021328.html
The annual ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
snowflake_challenge is underway. Following the tag from DW’s "latest things" is a good way to meet new people and reconnect with old pals. petra answered the best canon prompt by linking to Slings & Arrows, season 1, episode 3. The version they linked to is ODavies’s passion project of upscaling older shows and movies in glorious 4K. They look good, and at least Slings & Arrows’s captions survived the transfer (although many ks display as js)
Although I’ve been deploying pacing strategies to manage my chronic illness (CFS/ME) for 30 years, thanks to sonia for sharing this NHS video, which claims that true resting to recharge the parasympathetic nervous system requires no reading. This is a shocker for me, since I routinely listen to (admittedly low effort) audiobooks and podfics when resting.
How to rest properly to help recovery: watch on YouTube w A+ captions
Finally, this boomer realizes she’s living in the future: I’ve got a new mutual subscriber barbaratp. She writes in Brazilian Portuguese; I have no language even close. Yet we can mutually understand each other thanks to machine translation. (Of course there are glitches, and thankfully we’re humans and can double check that messages received is the message sent.)
Better than flying cars, really.
Any lovely things you've found here and wish to share?
ETA: 24 May 2025 correct pronouns
Listening to a new performer handling a well-known tune is my favorite introduction to their style and philosophy. Of course there’s a website for that: Second Hand Songs. Here’s their data on the lovely tune "Blues Run the Game," which you may have learned from Simon & Garfunkel if you’re a boomer.
… witnessing us enjoying each other’s work.
I was so charmed this morning when I listened to anatsuno's delicious podfic of busaikko’s kind, sweet gen-ish fic A Mark of Time, where asexual John and sexual athlete Rodney find a happy togetherness in fursuits.
As I left a comment on busaikko’s fic (which includes useful background on how/why furries are reviled, and why that’s a bad idea), I learned that it had inspired
bomberqueen17 to mention furry cuddling in an Atlantis-wide intranet RPS archive as part of her Two-Body Problem (WIP) series.
That fic is I ship it and it stands alone. bomberqueen17 creates an OFC, eager to join a gate team, who inadvertently goes on a fool's errand to sign up with Lorne, since he’s rumored to do all of Shepherd’s scutwork. Which ends up with a fake McShep kiss to give the new kids something to gossip about, as well as a true McShep kiss that’s what they deserve.
oursinThanks to oursin for these questions—if you’d like to continue the meme, raise your hand in a comment.
Have you read anything lately that really blew you away?
Cost of Living, an essay collection by Emily Maloney
Her precise, funny prose explores the interface between social norms and actual brains at personal and societal levels. Her neurodivergent thinking brings insight from her own experiences on both sides of the US medical complex. As a suicide survivor and psych patient, she acquired huge medical debt while getting inaccurate diagnoses and physical mistreatment. To pay down that debt, she worked as an emergency-department—based EMT tech, often in charge of doling out medications she was also taking. She translated medical studies into marketing copy for large pharmaceutical companies.
Two hundred words on the "opiate crisis" and pain prescribing:
( within )
If you were in a murder mystery, what part would you be playing?
The clueless guest who keeps asking “What’s going on?”
Is there is a musical instrument you wish you could play?
Sighs mournfully in F minor. The acoustic guitar I played daily from age 13 until I could no longer physically handle it, ca 33.
Favourite season of Buffy?
Season 3. I like the Faith-Buffy tension.
What kind of weather do you find most congenial?
Sunny with many puffy clouds, a fresh breeze, and temperatures between 50 and 65°F (10–19°C)
Three reddish-brown oak leaves, backs dotted with dew, rest near my front door. One balances at the edge of the black rubber door sill ramp, while the others splay on cool grey concrete, near the grey-green siding. Evokes, I hope, Mondrian.
( click for pic )
They're hidden now, because of course we had our first snow fall--excuse me, "wintry mix." How's the weather by you?
The "Mindwebs" series of 30-minute science fiction and fantasy short works brings back happy memories. Michael Hanson's voice is liquid chocolate velvet and the production values are very high (though the table-of-contents leans heavily pale male). I heard some of these live on WERN/WHA, which has a good claim to be the oldest public radio station in the USA.
It’s hosted at the Internet Archive: archive.org/details/MindWebs_201410, where I’ve had no luck using their streaming player but the downloads are fine.
Double treat: Urban infrastructure and assistive technology! Thanks to
LinusBoman, who explores the tactile and auditory interface for pedestrian signals in Sweden. Unfortunately, he provides no image descriptions to the many photos and slides in his presentation:
( stream here )
Watch on YouTube https://youtu.be/330teb6dst0
audio only "lyric video" — large captions on screen, but no explicit image descriptions
I just today realized that Boman worked on my favorite, default font, Atkinson Hyperlegible. He’s a type geek, choral singer, and designer of classy-looking books and cocktails under the brandname Calligraphuck. His home page is (of course) at TimesNewBoman.
beatrice_otter points out that the Harassment Policy statement in the revised Terms of Service draft does nothing to protect fans from harassing "gift fics." Very useful discussion at that post!
Thanks to goss, here’s a meme
Introduce yourself with some jobs you have done apart from what you do now
I retired from paid employment in 1990, and since then I’ve been a disability rights advocate, helped herd SF con cats, and typed & read many many things on the internet.
Before that, I was…
Per an email from OTW a couple weeks back, I learned that they’re updating the Terms of Service (TOS) for Archive of our Own (AO3).
They finally address requests for including warnings for Hate Speech, Racism, Slavery at some length, but they’ve hidden the discussion deep in a draft.
tl;dr — No new warnings. Only a handful of people have commented. They’re soliciting comments until 17 November 2024. The rest of this post is linked excerpts from OTW’s reasoning against warnings, and from folks who've commented.
( 900 words )
branchandroot