redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
([personal profile] redbird Nov. 4th, 2025 10:01 pm)
The three of us voted this afternoon, then went to the supermarket, where we had to deal with a pushy person who wanted us to sign dodgy-looking petitions: he said they were for same-day voter registration, but I noticed that the page he wanted us to sign didn't say what we were signing for. There are dozens of possible state ballot questions for next year, so it could be almost anything. (The procedure in Massachusetts, as I understand it, is people or organizations say "I want to put this on the ballot," and then the attorney general vets the proposals, and either OKs them or explains why not. After that, they can collect signatures.)

The only thing on the ballot in Boston today was city council seats, after the incumbent mayor's main opponent formally withdrew after coming in a distant second in the primary. Happily, I had a choice of five or six good candidates for the four at-large city council seats.
Thank you to [personal profile] sanguinity and [personal profile] ride_4ever for donating to your local food banks/pantries! This post has details on how to get me to write for you next by donating.

Party foul (100 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Darren Nichols/Geoffrey Tennant
Characters: Darren Nichols, Geoffrey Tennant
Additional Tags: Drabble, Shakespearean Comedy
Summary:

Darren and Geoffrey celebrate Halloween during university.


*

Still I think I've been overpaid (100 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: White Collar (TV 2009)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke/Neal Caffrey
Characters: Elizabeth Burke, Peter Burke, Neal Caffrey
Additional Tags: Drabble, First Time
Series: Part 2 of Can't be bought or sold
Summary:

El, Peter, and Neal get naked.


*

In persistent music news, Golden from KPop Demon Hunters is chasing me around the city to a degree that I haven't experienced with a song since I spent a lot of time in doctor's office waiting rooms during the peak of Let It Go-a-rama. I heard it in two different places today. I'm not sure which is going to prove to be more persistent outside my head; I still don't know what all the words to Golden mean, and it's not because I don't know how to find out.

*

I have been listening to The Expanse via audiobook.

Spoilers for Tiamat's Wrath's first couple of chapters )
*

Goodbye and good riddance to Dick Cheney and Andrew Cuomo's NYC mayoral bid!
beatrice_otter: Jack O'Neill in an alien prison--one of those days. (One of Those Days)
([personal profile] beatrice_otter Nov. 4th, 2025 05:56 pm)
Now that [community profile] rarepairexchange authors have been revealed, I can tell you what I wrote!  A Riker/Ro fic!

And this was not my first fic for this exchange. I got about halfway into a fic that I really liked, set during the Dominion War, just after the destruction of Enterprise. Riker and Ro were both on separate missions for Starfleet and the Maquis, and chanced to meet in a bar on some station somewhere. The problem was, that this is not an exchange that allows for genfics, and while I could have a really interesting conversation between the two, I couldn't figure out how to get them together in a way that I found satisfactory and realistic. I thought I could! but it didn't work out. So I stopped and did this instead. Throughout the process, [personal profile] sixbeforelunch was extremely helpful.

Title: Extra Time
Author: Beatrice_otter
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Characters: Ro Laren/Will Riker
Written for: Eratoschild in Rare Pair Exchange 2025
AN: Thank you to [personal profile] sixbeforelunch  for brainstorming help and betaing.

On AO3. On Ad Astra. On Squidgeworld. At Pillowfort. On Tumblr.

"I wish I could give you better news, Will," Captain Picard said over the shuttle's comm system.

Will rubbed his forehead. "It's about what I expected, sir." The business of Enterprise's schedule and the shortage of other Starfleet vessels in the area to handle routine matters was why he and Ro had been dispatched in the shuttle Cousteau to handle this mission in the first place.

The anthropologists studying Lichiri V had wrapped up their mission and been extracted months ago. They'd returned to their university only to find that they had not double-checked their packing lists and had left a few small bits of equipment behind. Nothing big or hard to replace, but Lichiri V was currently in the middle of a (very slow) industrial and technological revolution, and nobody wanted to take the risk that some bright Lichirian would find the damn things and figure out enough about them to do damage. Enterprise was the only ship in the area, and she was busy with some tense diplomatic negotiations, and would be for a while.

Fortunately or not, Lichiri V was just at the edge of reasonable shuttle travel from the two systems Enterprise was currently stuck hovering between. Ro needed supervised piloting hours to get her small craft certification back. And, despite Will trying to find a better answer, he was the officer Enterprise could currently spare with the least disruption. And his own dislike of the ensign was not sufficient reason to disrupt other ship operations more than necessary.

So, Will and Ro had been dispatched to go pick up the equipment in the Cousteau. Four days in a cramped shuttle, a day or two in the Lichiri system to pick up the equipment and restock the shuttle with basics like water, oxygen, and hydrogen, and four days back.

If a freak ion storm hadn't blown up when they were already mid-takeoff, they'd already be on their way out of the system. Instead, the Cousteau had been damaged, they'd had to land again, and they'd be stuck here until Enterprise could swing by and pick them up. Which at the rate negotiations were going could take weeks, if not longer.

Read more... )
starwatcher: Western windmill, clouds in background, trees around base. (Default)
([personal profile] starwatcher posting in [community profile] fandom_checkin Nov. 4th, 2025 06:03 pm)
 
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Tuesday, November 04, to midnight on Wednesday, November 05. (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #33800 Daily Check-in
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 12

How are you doing?

I am OK.
6 (50.0%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
6 (50.0%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single.
6 (50.0%)

One other person.
4 (33.3%)

More than one other person.
2 (16.7%)




Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
 
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rolanni: (Default)
([personal profile] rolanni Nov. 4th, 2025 07:47 pm)

So, here's The Plan, insofar as &c.

I have nothing on my calendar (saving the 45th anniversary of Doing the Legal) until next Tuesday afternoon.

This? Is a Gift. And what I intend to do with the gift is to make some serious inroads into the remaining quarter of the WIP. This means that check-ins will be ... sporadic, and possibly will not happen at all.

Default setting should be that nothing bad has happened; I'm working.

I thank all of your for your care and support, and --

cracks knuckles

Let's do this thing.

Everybody stay safe.


mickeym: (Default)
([personal profile] mickeym Nov. 4th, 2025 06:14 pm)
Hey, y’all.

I hate doing this, and I’m so ashamed that I’m having to do it again, but I am asking for some help. I know things are tight for everyone right now, especially those who’ve been furloughed, or had hours cut, or have had their SNAP benefits withheld because of government stupidity.

We have four things we need to get paid in the next couple of weeks:

Electric, due 11/6; $160
Water, due before 11/22; $190 (that includes a 10% late fee)
Groceries, any amount, for stuff we can’t get from foodbanks: hamburger, chicken, milk, butter, cheese. Ideally $150, but anything.

And we need to get insurance on the junkmobile again. It lapsed, and we need to have it. That’s, I don’t know, about $150-$200.

My Medicaid case manager and I have been making the rounds to try and find funding for the electric and water, but we’re coming up short. Too many in need and not enough resources.

If anyone can help at all, I would be very grateful.

You can use my Paypal account: kimandmattg6794@gmail.com and Matthew has a CashApp which is whiteshotmatt.

Thank you for reading this, and a huge thank you and eternal gratitude if you can help me out.
rolanni: (Default)
([personal profile] rolanni Nov. 4th, 2025 04:13 pm)

We haven't done one of those for a while, so!

The Obligatory Buy My Books Post

Civilized Behavior: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Volume #36 is now available for preorder as an ebook from All The Usual Suspects. It will be available for instant purchase-and-download from Baen on November 13.

There will be a paper edition. In theory, it will be available for order from Amazon on November 12.

Paired charity anthologies A Future for Ferals, and More Futures for Ferals, edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail are now available for purchase. "Ginger and the Bully of Lowergate Court," by Sharon Lee, is reprinted in More Futures. Across these two volumes are over forty stories about cats written by authors who know and love them. All stories are donated; the profits from anthology sales go to feral cat charity A Future for Ferals.

The kickstarter for Adversity and Audacity is now live, a reprint anthology featuring fiction by writers who continued to write despite cancer diagnoses/treatment. Twenty authors and over 120,000 words of fiction, and we're not yet done. In addition to a Foreword provided by Robert J. Sawyer, and an Afterword by Susan Palwick, work by N.R. Brown • Adam-Troy Castro • Dave Creek • Ef Deal • Tom Doyle • Gregory Frost • Sally Wiener Grotta • Karen Heuler • Carol Hightshoe • Walter H. Hunt • Geoffrey A. Landis • Shirley Meier • Sharon Lee and Steve Miller • Juliet Marillier • Christine Morgan • Raven Oak • Martha Roo • Lawrence M. Schoen • Melissa Lee Shaw • M. Turville Heitz. This is not a charity anthology.

The latest Liaden Univese® novel was Diviner's Bow, the third book in the internal arc that includes Trader's Leap, Ribbon Dance, and Diviner's Bow. All three are available as ebooks, hardcovers, and audiobooks. Trader's Leap and Ribbon Dance are also available as mass market paperbacks. The mass market edition of Diviner's Bow will be released in January.

Coming in December, the "anniversary" edition of I Dare by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.

Bonus answer to the perennial question: What On Earth is the Woman doing?: I'm working on the sequel to Salvage Right, which is to be turned in to Baen in April 2026.  It has a title, but I haven't run it by Madame yet.

And that's all the news that's fit to print.


oursin: Animate icon of hedgehog and rubber tortoise and words 'O Tempora O Mores' (o tempora o mores)
([personal profile] oursin Nov. 4th, 2025 07:11 pm)

Actually I daresay it was bots, even then, but it had a vaguely handspun amateur air about it-

Does anyone else remember (did anyone else receive) those scam messages alleging that they had VIDEO of the recipient pleasuring themself to PORN and if X amount was not sent to scamdealer's bitcoin wallet, they would send it to all of the recipient's contacts?

This was all badly enough spelt and ungrammatical enough, before the whole This Never Happened factor, that it could be readily dismissed.

(Or do I lead an unnaturally clean life? Is this a version of 'Fly! All Is Discovered!' at which a significant % who receive the message will, indeed, Get Out Of Dodge Pronto.)

Anyway, it sounds positively sweet and pastoral, compared to this, which is presumably pulling on the same shame strings: Rise of the ‘porno-trolls’: how one porn platform made millions suing its viewers:

Thousands of lawsuits follow a similar formula: Strike 3 claims to use a proprietary software called VXN Scan to track IP addresses that have downloaded porn they own. The software cannot identify the user beyond a rough geographic location, so Strike 3 files suit against an anonymous John Doe, and subpoenas their internet service provider (ISP) to unmask the user. The ISP in turn alerts the subscriber – which is when most people find out they have been sued. These people are often keen to settle, being cheaper than litigation and the only way to ensure their anonymity.
....
Thousands of lawsuits follow a similar formula: Strike 3 claims to use a proprietary software called VXN Scan to track IP addresses that have downloaded porn they own. The software cannot identify the user beyond a rough geographic location, so Strike 3 files suit against an anonymous John Doe, and subpoenas their internet service provider (ISP) to unmask the user. The ISP in turn alerts the subscriber – which is when most people find out they have been sued. These people are often keen to settle, being cheaper than litigation and the only way to ensure their anonymity.

The further one reads, the dodgier this all sounds.

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll Nov. 4th, 2025 11:14 am)
Because both shows feature a red-haired teenaged girl with a monosyllabic name and a troubled relationship with their family, my brain merged the continuities of Son of a Critch and Stranger Things.
lizvogel: A jar of almonds that warns that it contains almonds. (Stupid Planet)
([personal profile] lizvogel Nov. 4th, 2025 10:08 am)
I could do without the time change coinciding with the beginning of novel writing month.

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