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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.

Addendum: there are in fact forty-seven "petition initiatives" on the state website, including a few that are labeled as versions A, B, or even C of the same thing. The list is on the state website: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/ballot-initiatives-submitted-for-the-2026-biennial-statewide-election-proposed-laws-and-2028-biennial-statewide-election-proposed-constitutional-amendments

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politics:massachusetts

Now that

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,

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

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... )

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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.

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A few years ago - I feel like it was sometime in mid-2020 - I bought a pillow that was 1. supposed to be "cooling" and 2. supposed to be good for side-sleepers, and reader, I hated it. Also it fucked up my neck a couple of times, but it was not cheap, so I kept using it. Until earlier this year, when I began trying to make my whole sleep experience better. I couldn't find the pillows I'd had prior to purchasing the crimes against my neck pillow, which I'd liked but had worn out, so I ended up getting something similar, on sale from Quince, so I was able to get 2. Which would not have been my first stop, but they were highly rated, down-alternative pillows available in 3 different firmnesses (I went with medium). It turned out to be a good purchase, because I like them so much better than the old side-sleeper pillow, which I now use between my knees.

I also finally ended up buying not a big fluffy white comforter as I was looking for earlier this year, but a white "cooling blanket" from Rest. It was a NYT Wirecutter recommendation, and it was on sale, which made me feel slightly better about spending money on it. And I do like it. I like it enough that I bought a second one in navy blue to switch out while the white one is being washed. The one thing I dislike though, is that to get the full "cooling" effect (I put it in quotes, but the material is some kind of tencel thingy that cools off very quickly, so even when I feel too hot, I can kick it off and pull it back on after a few minutes and it is cool again), is that you can't use it with a top sheet. And I know some people never use a top sheet, but I was not one of those people until I bought this blanket. But the whole point is to have this fancy cool material against your skin. *hands*

It is lighter than a comforter and probably won't work if you need weight on you to sleep, but along with the pillows, and the percale sheets I've been using since the days of frequent hot flashes and night sweats (which have thankfully become much rarer these days), I've found my sleep has definitely improved. It also helps to keep the bedroom as cool as possible. Tbh, being hot is the #1 reason I can't sleep, and even now, after all these improvements, I do still sometimes have a bad night of sleep for whatever reasons, but I feel like it's a lot less often than it used to be.

In other news, I was off today for Election Day, but since I voted by mail, I didn't have to go anywhere. I ended up taking care of some chores around the apartment that needed doing since the cleaning ladies will be coming on Thursday. And now I'm watching the Rangers lose to Carolina. Sigh.

*

Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: Rangers vs Canes on tv

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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.

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When I saw her a few weeks ago my vegan-and-gluten-free-bc-allergies friend said that she loves oat milk and it tastes much better than soy or almond milk, especially in coffee, so I got some to try.

And it's so good! I'm only making cocoa with it right now, but it impressed me right away. I use lactose-free dairy products usually, but I suspect that they disagree with me too, just mildly, especially cocoa made with milk. I've always been too lazy to test that systematically. Eliminating all dairy for an extended period (which I have a few times) isn't rigorous enough because other things can upset my stomach too, including just... anxiety.

I really love lattes - mostly chai and matcha, but I like coffee lattes too - and I've been wanting to make them for years and years. I was originally planning to get a milk steamer as a reward when and if I ever pass the driving test, but currently I'm trying a caffeine-free diet to see if it helps my anxiety. I'm not sure if I will decide to consume it again when the trial is over (I'm doing two and a half months minimum on physician's advice), and there's no point buying one if not.

There's popcorn flavored oat milk at the store. Bewildered and concerned. Don't like that.

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health

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.

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Posted by Ben Sullivan

https://scienceblog.com/inside-the-governance-puzzle-of-generative-ai-adoption/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=572077

https://scienceblog.com/inside-the-governance-puzzle-of-generative-ai-adoption/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=572077

Posted by Ben Sullivan

https://scienceblog.com/ultraviolet-light-sparks-a-new-path-for-solar-desalination/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=572075

https://scienceblog.com/ultraviolet-light-sparks-a-new-path-for-solar-desalination/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=572075

Posted by Ben Sullivan

https://scienceblog.com/mits-fsnet-delivers-fast-guaranteed-solutions-for-complex-systems/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=572071

https://scienceblog.com/mits-fsnet-delivers-fast-guaranteed-solutions-for-complex-systems/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=572071

Posted by Ben Sullivan

https://scienceblog.com/not-all-bats-are-viral-villains-study-finds/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=572069

https://scienceblog.com/not-all-bats-are-viral-villains-study-finds/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=572069

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.