yeloson | Reading

First Intro to Sociology class was today!

The professor is an out nonbinary person and very assertive about it. And very assertive about a lot of things. Like no screens in the classroom, yes this includes laptops, but also don't turn in anything handwritten, that will get an automatic zero. Also, remember that deep breathing exercise we did to start class? Now you know that you are always in control! Even if you have some sort of anxiety thing, you are still in control, because you can control your breathing! Also they have a pet peeve about loud yawning, this means you, random student who just yawned. Also also they don't do the compliment sandwich method of feedback because it takes too much time.

...Yeah. I promptly dropped the class, with plenty of time for a full refund, because I really, really don't think this teaching style would mesh well with my ADHD. And that's not even getting into the extremely punishing course schedule.

Sadly, they are also the only professor who teaches LTBTQ+ Studies, which I am currently registered for in the fall semester; I plan to meet with my academic advisor ASAP and switch that class to something else, because no, thank you, actually? No, thank you.

Current Mood: disappointed

rydra_wong

A whole world of games not playable on Mac has opened up to me, and it's Steam summer sale time!

Please rec me your favourite games, bearing in mind that I have very limited reflexes/co-ordination.

(I'm not completely ruling out games involving them, but the threshold for entry has to be very very low. I am currently enjoying Refunct because it allows me to try some simple platforming in a very chill and pleasant environment with no time pressure and no penalties for taking several hundred tries to get a jump.)

soc_puppet

I finally finished listening to the main story of MDZS! There was some delay for various reasons, mostly related to my car's failing fan motor, but I managed to get to the end 🎉 (Minus the extras. But those can wait.)

Definitely love the story; don't know if I have any particular fandom feels about it, though. SVSSS still has my heart in that regard.

Speaking of, a stray thought: I'm about 90% sure that the "Immortal" part of "Proud Immortal Demon Way" is specifically referring immortal human cultivators, and thus Binghe's heritage. He is both immortal in the human cultivator sense, and a demon. I'm obviously not one hundred percent sure here, but it makes enough sense in context that it just kinda... tickles my brain occasionally when I see alternate interpretations.

Anyway, provided I can find a way to rip my Audible library, I'll probably listen to TGCF next, but we'll see what happens.

Current Mood: recumbent

soc_puppet

I may as well share this here.

( Humanitarian Rats )

( Works Cited )

Current Mood: drained

thistleingrey

In almost two months, I've read about 15% of Bernard Spolsky's The Languages of the Jews (slowness is a me-issue). By the 15% point, the book has summarized contemporary usage of Hebrew in Israel, then begun examining historical usage of Hebrew from earliest to more recent. So far, Spolsky tries to assert rather than tuck away his assumptions, which I appreciate. I've read some work by philologists and historical linguists on other language families, and a historical treatment by a sociolinguist who's aware of his strengths is a lovely thing.

( a couple of the book's assumptions and something cool it does with them )

soc_puppet

Okay! Time to buckle down and write my informative speech outline!

(I am 100% going to talk to my Speech teacher about the possibility of getting an early start on our final speech, because this whole "Write a speech to present in one week" thing is just. No. No? No, thank you, I do not care for that.)

After that, I can get back to the important work of figuring out how to get characters in the correct position for a Sot 69 fic.

Current Mood: frustrated

rydra_wong

* SAVE OFTEN, especially in the early game when you may be very fragile and the game's auto-save is infrequent.

BUT -- don't reload from a save unless you actually die or otherwise hit a "game over."

This game is about failing, and it rewards you for playing forwards through failure. Some of the best moments in the game come from failed checks. There are always alternative routes and ways forwards. If you tried to savescum it, you would miss most of the game and all of the point. Embrace failure.

~~Okay there are those two specific checks where failing is so emotionally devastating I would not judge anyone for savescumming. But apart from those.~~

* You can just pick one of the Archetypes for a starter build, and leave messing around with custom character creation until you've seen the stats in action and understand how the system works. Don't stress about it. Or, if you want, you can throw yourself into custom character creation despite not having a clue how it works, and you will also have a fun time. Your initial build and your later choices about what you put points into will radically change your experience of the game, but you can't do it "wrong"; there are no optimal builds which are "better".

* Press tab to highlight objects you can interact with, or activate "detective mode" in the settings to do it automatically. Yes I know this is the sort of thing that is probably obvious to people who have played video games before.

* If your Health or Morale (displayed on the lower left of the screen) fall to zero, you have about 5 seconds to apply a healing item (if you have one) by clicking the cross above that stat.

This is the one timed element in the game, and also the one mechanic that some of us initially have trouble grasping.

With all the other mechanics in the game, you can not only learn them by flinging yourself in and floundering about, this is IMHO the best and most enjoyable way to learn them. No idea what the Thought Cabinet is or what Internalizing A Thought means? Try it and find out!

* Perhaps the most important tip of all:

If you feel you are flailing around and failing on most of the checks you try and you've just been informed you have acquired a Thought you can internalize in your Thought Cabinet and you have no clue what that means or maybe you just had a heart attack and died before you even got out of your hotel room or you had a nervous breakdown because a child insulted you and you have no idea what you're doing and it's been three days and you still haven't got the body down from the tree --

THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAME "BADLY". THIS IS IN FACT THE UNIVERSAL DISCO ELYSIUM EXPERIENCE AND MEANS YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAME CORRECTLY. WELL DONE.

soc_puppet

I spent the past two days going more-or-less all out for Go Fest, and honestly I had a blast. I did a bunch of raids, got two shiny Zamazenta (one with the special background) and five shiny Zacian (no special backgrounds on any of these, alas), and am honestly pretty pleased with my shiny hoard overall. In addition to those, I got one of my longtime shiny wants: A shiny Pachirisu!

It's also been as hot and humid as a frog's armpit the past week or so, which made all that walking around... interesting. I did my best to stay hydrated and cool off as needed, and chugged more Gatorade than I initially anticipated, but I've come out the other side more-or-less fine. I did end up with more chafing than I expected, most of it in the usual places (only some of which I thought to apply preventative measures to, alas), and at least one surprise new place (my right underarm, just a little past my armpit region). I expect I'll need to keep those in mind for next year, alas. On the plus side, none of the chafing spots have blisters, which I am tentatively crediting my anti-sweat medication for.

Anyway, all that out of the way, I would like to announce that I've come up with the perfect nicknames for shiny versions of this weekend's legendaries:

Zamagenta and Zacyan.

Current Mood: pleased

rydra_wong

Disco Elysium is currently 90% off in the Steam summer sale, making it a mere £3.49.

Play Disco Elysium, everybody. Yes, even if you don't play video games.

(It was the first video game I ever played -- apart from having once(?) played Pac Man as a child, many many decades ago -- and it was a perfect choice.)

If you understand the principle of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, have a vague sense that "stats" and "levelling up" are things, and can grasp "click to go to a place/interact with an object," you are sufficiently equipped.

ETA: Okay, I will add in

astrogirl's excellent content warning:

It's definitely not for everybody. I mean, for one thing, it gets pretty much all the trigger warnings for everything. Alcoholism and substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, discussions of sexual assault, gore (not visual, but some of the descriptions are very vivid), you name it. A number of characters are giant racists. (Towards fictional races/ethnicities, mind you, but it's still ugly.) Evil children will hurl homophobic slurs at you. That sort of thing. And whatever your politics, the game will try very hard to make you feel uncomfortable about them.

rydra_wong

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/06/25/trans-westminster-lobby-ehrc/

The organizers are estimating circa 900 people showed up, putting it on a par with the biggest LGBTQ+ lobbies ever (against Section 28).

Outstanding work from the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, who also organized the legal briefing for MPs in May:

https://www.attitude.co.uk/news/trans-legal-experts-warn-supreme-court-ruling-could-be-breaching-human-rights-in-parliamentary-briefing-483801/

You can support them and get the "Maybe I'm trans?" badges or just support them without badges:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/maybe-im-trans
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/solidarity-projects-campaigns-fund

summercomfort

Lo! The child is dropped off to summer camp (9am-3pm), and Spouse is at work (in-person!!), which means that I am BY MYSELF for the first time in a long time! (I love spouse and child, but also, being with humans and keeping track of humans, much beloved as they are, still saps my introvert energy lol)

I think one of the things that has happened over the past few years is that my ability to deal with other people has decreased (or maybe, it takes more energy to do basic masking? I definitely understand why dad has decided to retreat to China, never to return). It's funny, since I keep trying to come up with gadget- or space-based solutions to this, only to hit the wall of "actually I'm too much of a sensitive hothouse flower for this solution." For example, I'm like "oh! noise-canceling headphones!" but I actually hate things touching my head or being in my ears, so lol that's not gonna work. Or I'm like "I'll create a 'me' corner in the bedroom with a comfy armchair and my stuff", except that it turns out that what I really need is a long stretch of time by myself??? Where I can decide what the next task is???

Another thing, is that I think my number of WIPS and to-do projects have accumulated, to a point where it's gumming up my creative generation energies. So one of the goals of this summer is to finish some out-standing projects!

This week:
- Finish stands
-> oopsie I did one wrong. I think, to fix it, I should:
---- cut out the other 3 "V"s
---- replace the wrong one with a new one (therefore no screw holes!)
---- stain and polyurethane the other 2 "Vs" plus the new one that's attached to the fixed stand
---- I need to do all of this after the current bit of polyurethane dries

Stand 1: ready for wheels and carpeting
Stand 2: needs 3 more flips+coats (as in, 1 side needs 1 more layer and 1 side needs 2 more layers). Stand 3: needs to completely swap a piece in, and then 3 more flips+coats

So maybe the order of affairs should be:
- pause coats rn, then after 3pm I can cut the other 3 "V"s and get the piece swapped in
- resume polyurethane coats tomorrow, should have stands 2 and 3 finished by then

This Afternoon:
- Maybe do some more tie-dye with Miss R?
- do typing and Chinese with Miss R

Tonight:
- prep cyanotyping
- cyanotyping

Projects:
- Serpentine Anthology
- Fix website stuff (update soupycomics, deal with maybe virus problems? figure out proper comic hosting? update SCS website?)
- New court case comic (Ozawa? or something else?)
- July 4th comic? (not certain if want do)
- Finish some fic wips
- collect Tisquantum in 1 book? (eh)

Things to watch:
- West Side Story
- Superman?
- Condor Heroes?

soc_puppet

Welp, I just got my Listening assignment back. You know, the one that I kinda phoned in?

I got 100%.

This is important information for me on how hard I need to work on future assignments.

Up next is our informative speech. I'm contemplating topics (to be discussed in class tomorrow evening), and am leaning towards either Apopo or Esperanto. We'll see how my classmates feel about rats.

In Philosophy news, the remaining class periods are going to be dedicated to gearing up for the final exam, and then actually taking the final exam. The teacher has assured us that any classwork in the remaining days will be bonus points, and also that he's dropping the lowest score of the three exams in class, so if we're happy with our grades, we don't have to continue to show up. We're certainly welcome to do so! But not obligated.

I got 100% in both Philosophy exams, and have been participating like heck in class discussions and such. I feel very confident in my grade. As such, I'm planning to skip six thirty minute drives and stay home instead.

Current Mood: working

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yeloson

November 2012

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Delivering Justice on Heaven's Behalf

Talking deep about geek shit

Reading

Argh? Argh.

I am now the proud owner of a secondhand Steam deck! Rec me games!

MXTX stuff

Speech: Humanitarian Rats

current reading (spolsky 1/?)

My speech will be on Apopo

For anyone I've successfully lured: my top Disco Elysium tips

Pokémon Go Fest 2025

PSA

Looks like the mass lobby got NUMBERS \o/

(no subject)

School stuff

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November 2012

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