(no subject)

Oct. 15th, 2025 07:14 pm
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[personal profile] flemmings
Physio says the recurring and random pain in my foot might be a nerve gone wonky and advises cushioning on the sole to take pressure off. Evidently these things will go away on their own so all I need is patience.

Recycle tomorrow and having gone through most of my surplus manga, I began throwing out paper. Stacks and stacks from the late 80s and 90s, APA articles and Japanese lessons. And no, they will not come in handy some day. I give up on Japanese grammar: kanji are enough to be going on with if I ever get back to them.

But someone somewhere mentioned the book they learned ancient Greek from, a reading course that seems to give you basic grammar at the end of each section but no vocabulary at all.  It's on archive.org and delineates the post-mortem adventures of a boy called Themistocles and, well, I discover that google will define the words for me even if Chrome won't give me the Greek alphabet to do it in. Keyboard will only switch to one language other than English, and I need mine for Japanese. But I might take Japanese off the downstairs tablet and see if Greek will work there because downstairs is where I'd be reading Themistocles.

Otherwise have finished only a Charles Lenox, the latest Flavia Albia, and a couple of mysteries by Cyril Ten-names. Have Walpole and Leonardo desultorily on the go and more Cyril on the tablet,  though it seems I like Burton more than Rhode, when I thought it was the reverse.

en passant

Oct. 15th, 2025 03:12 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Still recovering from recent/ongoing health stuff but:



Resumed work on Candle Arc #2 (comic) pursuant to continued 2D animation preproduction, since the comics double as partial storyboards. I just processed the Ninefox Gambit: Prelude: Cheris #1 (comic) files for eventual print-on-demand as well, but it's on the website as well.
flemmings: (Default)
[personal profile] flemmings
Nuit blanche last night, very annoyingly. Got off close to 4, woke  up at 9 something, finally got up at 11. Supposed to be warm today so I bit the heavy-eyed achy-limbed bullet and called a cab to go to the ROM. Bloor past Spadina is a parking lot for reasons known only to itself. One of which might be the extremely wide bike lanes on that stretch. I'm all for bicycle lanes but can't quite see why the ones by Mink Mile need to be two metres/ 6'6, especially as the ones farther west are much narrower, where all the restaurants, ergo all the bike couriers, go. Whatever, the ROM  is redoing the Chin Lee Excrescence so one can again, and happily, enter by the Romanesque entry round the corner, into the familiar rotunda from my childhood.

Must say the AGO is much more wheelchair friendly than the ROM, even though both were built when the concept of catering to disability didn't exist. Maybe the AGO's renovation is more recent than the ROM's, or rather the late 80s renovation that preceded the Excrescence. Because if you want to go to the third floor where the Flemish painting exhibit is, there's only one elevator you can take,  tucked away around a corner, because all the others involve stairs when you arrive there. And then one goes down these very narrow corridors-- I mean, not wide enough for two people to pass each other-- between the new interior walls and the old outer stone walls to get you to where you're going. My friend the architect's daughter said All architects are assholes (like surgeons, apparently) and while I wouldn't go quite that far, I'll opine that the ROM has certainly hired asshole architects. 

However. Did indeed see the Flemish paintings in all their glowing colour and 16th/ 17th century extravagance. I prefer early Flemish myself, but the best we could do here was a school of Bosch copy of details from the right hand Hell panel in the Garden of Earthly Delights, and a rather pleasant Nativity by Hans Memling. Note also Michaelina Wautier, from the mid-1600s, a natural and pleasant contrast to some of her overdone contemporaries. Though the rooms of the exhibit were still pretty small and I had to be careful where I went with my walker: and when a tour group came through, wait for them to pass.

Then did a revisit of the Chinese collection on the ground floor, any number of Buddhist statues and the stone camels from the tomb area. I think we may have climbed on them as children, which people did in those days, and fortunately do not do now.

Having gone nowhere yesterday, I was determined to walk back the four anna half subway stops to get my steps in, and did, barely. The sole of my right foot has been panging me for several weeks now: physio thinks it's bunions, I think it's plantar fascitis, who knows. But I limped along gamely and when I passed Wiener's went in, with no great hopes, to ask if they had ever got the tree lopper in that was on back order since June. And they did! And it was cheaper than at 'we do not deliver' Canadian Tire,  and it fit in the basket of my walker, sort of ie it scraped the branches of any tree I passed, so I brought it home in triumph, go me. Of course it also weighs a ton and I hope I can lift it when it's extended, or even when it's not, but that's one itch scratched.

(no subject)

Oct. 13th, 2025 09:08 pm
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[personal profile] flemmings
Why do I keep sleeping in to noon? And not even going back to sleep, but uninterrupted ten and eleven hour stretches? It isn't even that cold anymore.

Whatever, I woke up at noon and did manage to do a wash and get it on the line. Where it still sits because the day was cloudy and cool and nothing got dry. Sun tomorrow which may do the trick, or I shall simply hang them from the stair rails.

Otherwise was all couch potatodom all the time. Finished my Charles Lenox hardcover and bought a bunch of Golden Age mysteries on Kobo, all by the same author using various aliases. John Rhode is Miles Burton is Cecil Street, NB. 

emotional support spinning: cotton

Oct. 12th, 2025 09:49 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


Cotton handspun single from combed top, a "completed" bobbin. I'm spinning threadweight so I don't...feel the need to "fill" the bobbin even halfway (for a planned 2-ply).

I do think I'd probably have a more pleasant time spinning cotton and silk if I had a dedicated treadle wheel for them, someday; but the wheel I own works. :3

(The background art on the wall is a poster of Wonder Woman artwork by Nen Chang.)

(no subject)

Oct. 12th, 2025 05:42 pm
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[personal profile] flemmings
So of course it rained this morning which put paid to any ideas I might have had about laundromats or getting a wash on the line: quite apart from me sleeping in to 11 yet again. But things dried up and cleared up by mid-afternoon so I went out in the washy grey and white clouds of autumn to Pauper's for their Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Now Pauper's has a bunch of older male servers and a few younger female ones who will get you seated and bring you your menu when. they. feel. like. it. and take your order ditto because they're busy talking to their coworkers or the regulars. So one is advised to bring an ebook on the phone or even a paper book, and I cursed myself because I finished my sole ebook last night. But in fact a new blonde hostess greeted me at once and waved me to 'anywhere you like', and a new blonde waitress brought my menu and took my drink order immediately. And my order arrived quicker than I'm used to and the waitress checked in on me twice to be sure I had all I wanted. Either a change in management or a Be Kind to Grannies Day, but I was grateful for it and tipped heavily in cash to encourage them to keep it up.

Their meal seems to be slightly smaller than usual, but I was still stuffed by the time I finished, and passed on pie and coffee. I mean, I really want pie, but there's still those eclairs to be accounted for, so no.

There was a weird smell in the house last night starting around 10, like someone cooking garlic and spices. Cooking smells do occasionally pass through the common wall here but I can't see anyone cooking at 10, especially not anyone with a kid who wakes up at 6. Sniffed outdoors in case it was something burning somewhere but couldn't smell a thing. Yet when I first went out today there was a lingering tinge of it on the air. Fortunately, by the time I got home it had been replaced by the much more autumnal aroma of woodsmoke. Trees all yellow and red as they should be, but a sweaty 18C because the sun was shining.  Same temp this morning was chilly because it wasn't, and the wind was blowing. Thus autumn, always.

Another long weekend

Oct. 11th, 2025 02:26 pm
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[personal profile] flemmings
Spent much of yesterday indoors waiting for my lenses in case they wanted a signature or something. They didn't, and I actually met the guy on the porch after noticing several large trucks on the street. So that's settled, and so am I for the next three months and change.

Then went to Fiesta to get in before the holiday shopping crowds. Fiesta now has eclairs of a sort ie custard filling not cream and different glazes, not chocolate. Figured I would indulge for the holiday since I'm not drinking, ordered two eclairs, one of each kind, but the clerk heard that as 'two of each' and packaged up four eclairs. Which I couldn't possibly have handed back to her and asked for only two, could I? Not on a Friday evening before a holiday with people waiting to get their bread sliced and all. I'm considerate that way. But it did mean having eclairs for dinner, which I bore with fortitude.

Forecast rain all day so I figured to stay indoors and cook my turkey roll. Turkey roll of course is an ultra processed food and not as much protein as you'd think. 19%? Wonder what else is in it? But it's comfort food and I've been eating rice and beans and eggs most of this week, so fine. Went to sleep with rain plopping on the window AC, woke at dark o'clock to pee, somehow slept another four or five hours and woke at 11 to brilliant sunshine. The hourly forecast was still saying 50% chance of rain and I debated going to my local for their turkey dinner. But I want wine with my restaurant meals and my tum, not to mention my sinuses, are still unhappy at the thought. So I am inside again, cooking my turkey roll, also carrots and potato to go with. And eclairs for dessert. While it's warmer today, my house holds the cold of last week, so an oven on for 3.5 hours is just fine. And the roll smells great.

Managed one long-time foot-dragging chore, planting a philodendron cutting in the bowl where my last cutting died. Also cleaned off the top of the bookshelf where my cuttings sit to catch the indirect light from the street, that was lightly covered in dirt from the pots that somehow spill over the top when I water them. Very satisfying, of course.

(no subject)

Oct. 9th, 2025 06:27 pm
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[personal profile] flemmings
Yes it's cold, no I will not turn on the heat. Though naturally I didn't want to get up this morning because bed so toasty warm, thus fell asleep again and dreamed of trying to get home ('home' being some kind of Bedford place) in a snowstorm with Nora Jemisin and a friend of hers who were supposed to be staying with me.

However, up eventually and out to the BoM where I exchanged $21 in dimes and nickels for bills and a loonie, and also got a new card because they're phasing out the old ones. That's two things off the list of to-does, but I should have asked for more coin wrappers and didn't. So of course I came home with a dollar in dimes because the restaurant I got take out at didn't have change. Restaurant was the Middle Eastern halal place my friend A. goes to, the one with the ridiculously huge portions. Alas, shall not be going there in person again because their music is so loud as to start a headache in the ten minutes I was waiting for my order. But still really good food.

Then by the Spadina library because they have a Charles Lenox in hardcover and I want one for this long weekend and my ebook is still showing two weeks wait. And home, for a measly 5000 steps that felt like much more. I think I need to book another massage, but will see what stretching accomplishes. Obviously I didn't do enough after gardening yesterday.

(no subject)

Oct. 8th, 2025 07:26 pm
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[personal profile] flemmings
Got another bag filled with linden seedlings and English ivy, then put both bags out for pickup tomorrow. Given that it rained all yesterday,  the seeds were oddly dry, for which I am grateful. Had to do my gardening without alcohol because system took exception to Black Russians with no carbs to absorb them. Very much the downside to no bread, because rice and potatoes don't have the same balancing effect. 

We return to autumn temperatures for a spell. I may not have to use the A/C again as I did on Sunday and Monday night but this month will still be above average. There are rumours of us going to single digits tonight. However my house still holds the warmth: and in fact a high of 15 with sun is still too warm for a jacket. I shall just sleep with a heavier hoodie and will be fine in my newly plumped up down duvet. Really I should have had that thing cleaned a good ten years ago.

In yesterday's enforced idleness I finally finished Terra Nostra, which kindly fell apart in the last 200 pages so I needn't wonder whether to keep it or not. True, I had to take a break and read David Wishart's version of the emperor Tiberius to counteract Fuentes'. What I also didn't register 40-odd years ago was the very dated attitude that women exist for love and more especially sex and have no other motive for living except that. This, when you're talking about a version of Elizabeth of England, is so wrong-headed as to be laughable. But it seems a commonplace amongst all the (male) Hispanic writers I've come across.

In any case, that's done. I have the latest Flavia Alba on the tablet and may start that biography of Leonardo that's been sitting on the shelf since forever, as a grounding corrective to Fuentes.

(no subject)

Oct. 6th, 2025 03:40 pm
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[personal profile] flemmings
Nothing weekend spent entirely indoors drinking Black Russians and doom-scrolling. Did order in yesterday from  Middle Eastern place.  I usually tip 20% in the app to provide incentive to pick my order, and then add cash at the door so as not to max my credit card too soon.  And because 20% of a low ball order isn't a lot. Didn't have the usual five dollar bill so had to give guy an envelope of coins. Then he sent me a text saying 'thank you for the tip, it really made my day.' Which maybe he says to everyone who tips him, but it certainly made my day.

It continues to be summer with high 20sC, pushing 80F. This will end tonight in rain and storms. Must get out and sweep up more leaves and seedlings for  Thursday's garden waste pickup but am not really moved to.

PSA

Oct. 6th, 2025 10:48 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
I'm now aware that Imgur images are broken for people with UK IP addresses; will repair those image links eventually by hosting own my own space but I have a bunch of work/school to deal with so it'll be slow.

emotional support spinning

Oct. 6th, 2025 05:58 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
This fiber colorway is from a monthly subscription (Feral Scene in Texas, so semi-local to me) - usually wool-based blends to push me out of my comfort zone. (I find wool to be the second-most difficult fiber to spin. First is cotton, which is more "normal" for a beginning spinner.)



I think of this as Pumpkin Spice yarn! It'll be going to [personal profile] ursula.

The current emotional support spinning WIP is cotton, widely regarded as hard mode for treadle wheel spinning. It only took six months of dedicated practice to skill up...



Shout-out to Mohairandmore [Etsy], which sells superlatively prepared fiber; the combed top for ramie and cotton are exquisite. They're also in Texas, so also semi-local to me, although I think most of their non-mohair fiber (they raise angora goats) is from other suppliers. I've got to budget for some of their merino blends at some point because I bet they're amazing to spin.

I wanted to learn to spin cotton because

(a) It's less wildly expensive than mulberry, eri, muga silk (my faves). You can get 4 oz. cotton fiber for ~$6 USD (not including shipping or tax). Silk fiber (unless it's "sari silk" loom waste) usually costs three times as much if not more.

(b) I'm in the US South. This is about as local as you get for fiber production! There's a little silk fiber production in the USA but not a lot of it, and again, whatever the source of the fiber, it's an inherently spendier fiber.

I went all-in on spinning because

(a) It's weirdly difficult to doomscroll on the internet while spinning. :p It's much better for my mental health; that alone would make it worthwhile.

(b) For my own use, I'm personally most interested in thread for needle lace, embroidery, cross stitch, hand-sewing, weaving. But I don't do any of those things very fast so I don't need very much for myself, and I'm narrowly interested in cotton or ramie or silk. I don't knit or crochet, but I have friends who do, and who can make use of yarns spun from Those Other Fibers! (I have functionally zero use for wool ever.) So anything I spin for my own learning/pleasure can go to a good home.

(c) I have wrecked ankle tendons (medical), and treadling on a spinning wheel is surprisingly good sneak physical therapy.

(d) I have neuropathy in my hands and feet, prognosis unknown. I don't want to wait five or ten years to pursue physical crafts further. My favorite thing is working with my hands (obviously, this isn't especially visible online). I regret I was never able to take a shop class because my high school didn't offer one. I don't know that I'm going to have sufficient use of my hands/feet in five to ten years (assuming the world hasn't imploded, a big assumption). So I might as well get some enjoyment out of hand/physical crafts now.

Rook & Rose Pattern Deck has landed!

Oct. 5th, 2025 01:36 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Gilt edges not pictured, largely because I couldn't wrangle a photo setup for them.

latest spinning

Oct. 5th, 2025 08:24 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


Two-ply ramie handspun. I still have to BOIL it with soda ash to set the twist, but this will be going to [personal profile] ilyena_sylph. ♥
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Genre Grapevine: Book Club Scams Are a Warning of Emerging AI Super-Scams [Jason Sanford - nota bene, I've been the target of such scams but have not fact-checked Sanford's specific details]

I'm sad that people are stuck in positions so desperate that they fall for this. I hope people get warned about this. I've gotten a couple of these and gotten asked about one that involved a scammer that cited that I was working with them (I was not, lol).

That said, I'm almost positive I've seen accounts of similarly structured scams from a time before modern mass telecommunications, when now you can fake up a bunch of "people" to convince greedy/hopeful/desperate marks that they've stumbled on some Good Thing and the marks can't (easily) verify those "people." You can do this in print with ~testimonials, but not at scale and not in realtime in this manner.

I'm not saying AI isn't a problem; I'm saying that if people weren't forced to desperation (or straight-up greedy), the incentive structure that enables the AI deployment to be profitable (so to speak) with this target ~audience would not be as successful. Which is perhaps splitting hairs and is the point at which I expect to be flamed off my own DW.

Very simplified but: Anytime you create an incentive A, you create a secondary incentive A' for bad actors to exploit the system to access A.

Hilarious terribad example of this: I was contacted for a blurb/etc for what sounded like an extremely unoriginal sexploitation "trans woman" sci-fi book (you know, sexbot cyberpunk sleazy noir but with a trans angle). That's not all that surprising and it's theoretically possible the book exists and was written by some human, or it exists but was written by some LLM, whatever. That's not the incentive. (For that matter, I'm not in a position to criticize a sci-fi book artistically on sleaziness grounds, please! I have published books full of genocide, rape, incest and other objectionable material. I'm a trash panda aesthetically.)

No: what was interesting from a scammer vs. mark arms race evolution perspective was that this author claimed to be (approximately, I'm writing this from memory) a trans woman in ~South Asia who was inspired by having done ~sex work. This is a clever way to appeal both to "woke" crowds and A Certain Sleazy Crowd! For ~privacy/safety reasons she could not accept interview/live call requests. This was accompanied by a SUPER fake-looking (likely AI-generated or badly Photoshopped, take your pick) Hot Asian Chick headshot.

So yes, absolutely as a trans person I know that safety/privacy are hideously important. But once incentive A exists, someone has incentive A' to piggyback on A, which is what looked like was happening here. I just blocked the email address and moved on. At this point, I've set up my email to auto-delete any email that mentions "Goodreads" or "Amazon", unless they're on a SMALL whitelist, among other countermeasures. Life is too short and I have ramie to spin!

I said cynically to [personal profile] telophase that I suspected that the "actual" "author" was some middle-aged white dude scammer sitting in North Dakota or, more tragically and pessimistically, some human trafficking scam farm outside the US.

I assume this is also where the fake-looking-ness is partly to screen out people who are moderately suspicious/vigilant/smart enough to avoid weird, scammy emails and/or ask around for more information, and to screen for people who are sufficiently desperate, greedy, or naive (cf. shitty obvious "tells" in phishing scams). But I'm out of field so I could be wrong.

Regardless: it's not that legislative or technological protections aren't important or necessary or desirable, it's that the underlying human problem of the incentives vs. secondary incentives is inherently intractable. :(

NOTE: I'm screening comments from non-[access] and may be scarce/slow because I'm recovering from a health thing. Thanks.

(no subject)

Oct. 2nd, 2025 07:08 pm
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[personal profile] flemmings
I've been doing just fine with the polyester duvet and a wool blanket these last two autumnal nights, though not using the window fan in case my house temperature actually starts getting autumnal. But my down duvet was indeed ready at the cleaners today so I might go back to that, even though the next five days will be recrudescent summertime mid-20sC/ high 70sF. This is reminiscent of 2023's weather pattern which might lead to another no winter, even if the Farmer's Almanac is saying cold and dry.

Also got to the laundromat so have clean hoodies of various thicknesses to combat these fluctuations. Must go buy more furnace filters because autumn returns with a vengeance on Wednesday. But meanwhile the pumpkin trees go glowing gold, but also shed their little leaves in great drifts. The maples are mostly thinking about it. Dry summers are supposed to yield great fall colours so I'm hopeful.

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