Phone, again [me, tech]
Aug. 21st, 2025 05:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidereaWhelp, it looks like I'm in the market for a cell phone again.
On Saturday night, I noticed something dangling from the corner of my cell phone, which immediately struck me as odd, as there's no aperture in the protective gel case there for something to get stuck. Well, there's not supposed to be. On further inspection, I discovered the corner of the gel case no longer fit over the corner of the phone, and some random shmutzig had gotten wedged... between the back plate of the phone and the rest of the phone, to which it was no longer attached along the bottom. Pressing it back down didn't work: something in the middle of the phone was causing resistance to closing the phone.
Lo, verily, my phone's battery was pregnant.
Some of you who follow me on the fediverse might be thinking, "Wait, didn't you just replace a phone, the battery of which swelled up?" Lol, yes: late April. That was my work phone. This is my personal phone. Lolsob.
So, being a proper nerd, I went right to iFixit to order myself a battery. Whereupon I was stopped by something that did not bode well. I entered my phone's model information and iFixit, instead of telling me what battery to buy, alerted me that it is not possible to determine what kind of battery my phone took from the outside.
It turns out that the OnePlus 9 G5 can take one of two batteries, and which one a given OnePlus 9 G5 takes can only be determined by putting eyes on the battery which is in it.
Well, okay then: I clicked through the helpful link to read instructions on how to pull the battery on a OnePlus 9 G5. I read along with slow dawning horror at exactly how involved it was and how many tools I would have to buy, and made it to step twelve – "Use a Phillips screwdriver to remove the ten 3.8 mm-long screws securing the motherboard cover. One of the motherboard cover screws is covered by a white water ingress sticker. To unfasten the screw you can puncture the sticker with your screwdriver." – of thirty and decided: fuck this, I will hire a professional.
(I think maybe it was a fortunate thing that I went through the prior fiasco with trying to change the battery on the Nuu B20 5G, first, because it softened me to the idea of maybe I don't have to service all my electronics personally myself.)
Alas, it was late on a Saturday night and all the cell phone repair places around me were closed until Monday.
Fortunately, I had a short day Monday and would be getting out of work around 5:30pm. I called ahead to a place that is open to 7pm to ask if I needed an appointment and whether they did OnePlus phones. There was a bit of a language barrier with the guy who answered the phone, but he said no appointment was necessary and whether they could fix my phone would entail putting eyes on it, and please try to come before 6pm to give them time to fix it before they close.
So after work, Mr B took me there, and we presented the phone. Dude got the back of the phone the rest of the way off the phone with rather more dispatch that I would be have been able to, and pretty quickly discovered that he was in over his head. Credit where it's due – "A man's got to know his limitations" – he promptly backed off, and told me to bring it back tomorrow when the more-expert boss was in.
I'm slightly irritated that we made the unnecessary trip instead of him saying, "Oh, a OnePlus, come tomorrow when our OnePlus expert is in", but it did give me the extra time to do more thorough backing-up. I have never managed to get Android File Transfer to work, nor any a number of alternatives; snapdrop.io would only do single files at a time, not whole directories, and, weirdly, Proton Drive, both app and website, doesn't allow uploading whole directories from Android either.
Finally, I saw a mention that the Android app Solid Explorer "does FTP". I wanted to make a local backup to my Mac, but, fuck it, I have servers, I can run FTP somewhere just to get my files backed up off my phone. Imagine my surprise on opening up the "FTP" option on Solid Explorer and discovering it wasn't an FTP client it was an FTP server. Yes, the easiest way I found to exchange files between my Android phone and my MacBook Pro was to put an FTP server on my phone.
Worked fine. My FTP client on my Mac sucks, but I'll solve that another day. (Does Fetch still exist?)
Mr B and I discussed it and decided he'd bring the phone in the next day, Tuesday, to spare me the hike. He returned with the phone, still with the back off, and the news that they had discovered, as I had, you have to get at the battery to even figure out which battery to order. And that he was told that the battery would be in by 3pm the next day (Wednesday). The only surprising thing here is that they could get the battery that fast.
So, today (Wednesday), after 3pm, Mr B took my phone back for a third visit, and they attempted to install my new battery.
It was the wrong battery.
( Hwaet! The saga continues... )
On Saturday night, I noticed something dangling from the corner of my cell phone, which immediately struck me as odd, as there's no aperture in the protective gel case there for something to get stuck. Well, there's not supposed to be. On further inspection, I discovered the corner of the gel case no longer fit over the corner of the phone, and some random shmutzig had gotten wedged... between the back plate of the phone and the rest of the phone, to which it was no longer attached along the bottom. Pressing it back down didn't work: something in the middle of the phone was causing resistance to closing the phone.
Lo, verily, my phone's battery was pregnant.
Some of you who follow me on the fediverse might be thinking, "Wait, didn't you just replace a phone, the battery of which swelled up?" Lol, yes: late April. That was my work phone. This is my personal phone. Lolsob.
So, being a proper nerd, I went right to iFixit to order myself a battery. Whereupon I was stopped by something that did not bode well. I entered my phone's model information and iFixit, instead of telling me what battery to buy, alerted me that it is not possible to determine what kind of battery my phone took from the outside.
It turns out that the OnePlus 9 G5 can take one of two batteries, and which one a given OnePlus 9 G5 takes can only be determined by putting eyes on the battery which is in it.
Well, okay then: I clicked through the helpful link to read instructions on how to pull the battery on a OnePlus 9 G5. I read along with slow dawning horror at exactly how involved it was and how many tools I would have to buy, and made it to step twelve – "Use a Phillips screwdriver to remove the ten 3.8 mm-long screws securing the motherboard cover. One of the motherboard cover screws is covered by a white water ingress sticker. To unfasten the screw you can puncture the sticker with your screwdriver." – of thirty and decided: fuck this, I will hire a professional.
(I think maybe it was a fortunate thing that I went through the prior fiasco with trying to change the battery on the Nuu B20 5G, first, because it softened me to the idea of maybe I don't have to service all my electronics personally myself.)
Alas, it was late on a Saturday night and all the cell phone repair places around me were closed until Monday.
Fortunately, I had a short day Monday and would be getting out of work around 5:30pm. I called ahead to a place that is open to 7pm to ask if I needed an appointment and whether they did OnePlus phones. There was a bit of a language barrier with the guy who answered the phone, but he said no appointment was necessary and whether they could fix my phone would entail putting eyes on it, and please try to come before 6pm to give them time to fix it before they close.
So after work, Mr B took me there, and we presented the phone. Dude got the back of the phone the rest of the way off the phone with rather more dispatch that I would be have been able to, and pretty quickly discovered that he was in over his head. Credit where it's due – "A man's got to know his limitations" – he promptly backed off, and told me to bring it back tomorrow when the more-expert boss was in.
I'm slightly irritated that we made the unnecessary trip instead of him saying, "Oh, a OnePlus, come tomorrow when our OnePlus expert is in", but it did give me the extra time to do more thorough backing-up. I have never managed to get Android File Transfer to work, nor any a number of alternatives; snapdrop.io would only do single files at a time, not whole directories, and, weirdly, Proton Drive, both app and website, doesn't allow uploading whole directories from Android either.
Finally, I saw a mention that the Android app Solid Explorer "does FTP". I wanted to make a local backup to my Mac, but, fuck it, I have servers, I can run FTP somewhere just to get my files backed up off my phone. Imagine my surprise on opening up the "FTP" option on Solid Explorer and discovering it wasn't an FTP client it was an FTP server. Yes, the easiest way I found to exchange files between my Android phone and my MacBook Pro was to put an FTP server on my phone.
Worked fine. My FTP client on my Mac sucks, but I'll solve that another day. (Does Fetch still exist?)
Mr B and I discussed it and decided he'd bring the phone in the next day, Tuesday, to spare me the hike. He returned with the phone, still with the back off, and the news that they had discovered, as I had, you have to get at the battery to even figure out which battery to order. And that he was told that the battery would be in by 3pm the next day (Wednesday). The only surprising thing here is that they could get the battery that fast.
So, today (Wednesday), after 3pm, Mr B took my phone back for a third visit, and they attempted to install my new battery.
It was the wrong battery.
( Hwaet! The saga continues... )
Seven Ages of Aurora
Aug. 21st, 2025 06:52 pmfardell24Auroran historians have settled on describing their history through Seven Ages, as a way to make sense of it all.
Seven Ages of Aurora
First – Neolithic (20th Century – 18th Century BC)
Second – Mid Ancient Era/Bronze Age (18th Century – 10th Century BC)
Third – Late Ancient Era/Iron Age (10th Century BC – 54 BC)
Fourth – Roman and Early Medieval Eras (54 BC – until 810, when the Vikings first started raiding the northeastern shores.)
Fifth – Nordic and Late Medieval Eras (810 to 15 June 1536 – When the Church of Aurora breaks from Rome during the Reformation.)
Sixth – The Renaissance (1536 to the 1750s, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution)
Seventh – Modern Aurora (1750s to present)
Seven Ages of Aurora
First – Neolithic (20th Century – 18th Century BC)
Second – Mid Ancient Era/Bronze Age (18th Century – 10th Century BC)
Third – Late Ancient Era/Iron Age (10th Century BC – 54 BC)
Fourth – Roman and Early Medieval Eras (54 BC – until 810, when the Vikings first started raiding the northeastern shores.)
Fifth – Nordic and Late Medieval Eras (810 to 15 June 1536 – When the Church of Aurora breaks from Rome during the Reformation.)
Sixth – The Renaissance (1536 to the 1750s, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution)
Seventh – Modern Aurora (1750s to present)
Admin: Patreon: What fresh hell #728, #729 [Patreon]
Aug. 20th, 2025 04:45 amsidereaYall. I am so tired.
Last thing first. Investigating the other thing, I discovered this. I'll just cut and paste what I submitted as a ticket to Patreon:
But the other thing is this: Patreon has dropped my business model.
Apparently by accident.
When I went to Patreon to create the Patreon post for my latest Siderea Post at the end of July, I was confronted with a recent UI update. In and of itself it wouldn't have been a problem, but, as usual, they screwed something up.
They removed the affordance for a post to Patreon to both be public and paid. The new UI conflated access and payment, such that it was no longer possible to post something world-accessible and still charge patrons for it.
I found a kludge to get around it so I could get paid at all, and I fired off a support ticket asking if it was possible but unobvious, or just not possible, and if it was not possible, whether that was a policy or a mistake. I have received very apologetic reply back from Patreon support which seemed to suggest (but not actually affirm) it was an unintentional:
The support person I was corresponding with encouraged me to write back with any further questions or issues, so I did:
0) Whoa.
1) That is the best customer service response letter I've ever gotten, for reasons I will perhaps break down at some other junction. But it both does and does not read like it was written by an AI. I didn't quite know what to make of it, until someone mentioned to me the phenomenon of customer service agents at another org using AI to generate letters, and then I was like, oooooooh, maybe that's what this is. Or maybe not. Hard to say.
2) Though [REDACTED] could not confirm or deny, it sure sounds like an accident, but one that impacts such an uninteresting-to-Patreon set of creators that they can't be arsed to fix it, either in a timely way or at all.
3) "The more we can highlight how important this feature is for creators like you, the better." is a hell of a sentence. Especially in conjunction with "...along with your broader feedback about the impact on creators who fund public goods.". Reading between the lines, it sure sounds like the support people have been inundated by a little wave of outraged/anguished public-good posters, and the support people, or at least this support person, is entirely on the creators' side against higher ups brushing them off. Could be a pose, of course, but, dayum.
So that's what I know from Patreon's side.
The kludge I came up with for the post I made at the end of July is that I used another new feature – the ability to drop a cut line across a Patreon post where above it is world readable and below it is paid access only – to make a paid-access only post where 100% of the post contents are above the cut line.
Please let me know if it's not working as intended. This unfortunately has the gross effect of putting a button on my new post saying "Join to unlock".
So.
In any event, I strongly encourage those of you following me as unpaid subscribers over on Patreon to make sure you're following me, instead, here on Dreamwidth, because Patreon is flaky.
I will make a separate post with instructions as to all the ways to do that. You can get email notifications of my posts (either all or just the Siderea Posts), follow RSS and Atom feeds, get DM inbox notifications, and, of course, just follow me on your DW reading page, all on/through Dreamwidth, anonymously and completely free.
Last thing first. Investigating the other thing, I discovered this. I'll just cut and paste what I submitted as a ticket to Patreon:
I took a break of a few months, and when I came back my fees spiked. What gives?I have received no response.
I just did a month (July 2025) that extremely similar to last January (2025): similar revenues (466.19 vs 458.50), similar patrons (160 vs 162). According to my "Insights > Earnings" page, my total fees went up from 11.4% to the astounding 14.6%. Drilling down, most of that is an eye-watering 3% increase of the payment fees (5.8% to 8.8%). There was also a minor increase of Patreon's platform fee from 5.6% to 5.8%.
That represents a FIFTY-TWO PERCENT INCREASE in processing fees, and a 28% increase in fees over all.
Care to explain? Was there some announced change in payment structure or payment processor fees I missed?
But the other thing is this: Patreon has dropped my business model.
Apparently by accident.
When I went to Patreon to create the Patreon post for my latest Siderea Post at the end of July, I was confronted with a recent UI update. In and of itself it wouldn't have been a problem, but, as usual, they screwed something up.
They removed the affordance for a post to Patreon to both be public and paid. The new UI conflated access and payment, such that it was no longer possible to post something world-accessible and still charge patrons for it.
I found a kludge to get around it so I could get paid at all, and I fired off a support ticket asking if it was possible but unobvious, or just not possible, and if it was not possible, whether that was a policy or a mistake. I have received very apologetic reply back from Patreon support which seemed to suggest (but not actually affirm) it was an unintentional:
From what we've seen so far, the option to make a post publicly accessible while still charging members for it isn't possible in the new editor. Content within a paid post will only be available to those with paid access, and it won't show up for the public.So it's not like the reply was, "Oh, yes, it was announced that we wouldn't be supporting that feature any more," suggesting, contrarily, they didn't realize they were removing a feature at all.
Other creators have reported this same issue, and I want to reassure you that I've already shared this feedback with our team. If anything changes or if this feature is brought back, I'll be sure to keep you in mind and let you know right away.
The support person I was corresponding with encouraged me to write back with any further questions or issues, so I did:
Hi, [REDACTED], thanks for getting back to me. I have both some more questions and feedback.I got this response:
1) Question: Am I understanding correctly, that the new UI's failure to support having publicly accessible paid posts was an oversight, and not a policy decision to no longer support that business model? Like, there's not an announcement this was going away that I missed? As a blogger who often writes about Patreon itself, I'd like to be able to clarify the situation for my readers.
2) Question: Do you have any news to share whether Patreon intends to restore this functionality? Is fixing this being put on a development roadmap, or should those of us who relied on this functionality just start making other plans? Again: my readers want to know, too.
3) Suggestion: If Patreon intends to restore this functionality, given the way the new UI is organized, the way to add the functionality back in is under "Free Access > More options" there should also be a "charge for this post" button, which then ungrays more options for charging a subset of patrons, defaulting to "charge all patrons".
4) Feedback: The affordance that was removed, of being able to charge patrons for world-accessible content, was my whole business model. I'm not the only one, as I gather you already have discovered. In case Patreon were corporately unaware, this is the business model of creators using Patreon to fund public goods, such as journalism, activism, and open source software. My patrons aren't paying me to give them something; my patrons are paying me to give something to the world. Please pass this along to whomever it's news.
5) Feedback: This is the sort of gaffe which suggests to creators that Patreon is out of touch with its users and doesn't appreciate the full breadth of how creators use Patreon. It is the latest in a long line of incidents that suggests to creators that Patreon is not a platform for creators, Patreon is a platform for music video creators, and everybody else is a red-headed stepchild whom Patreon corporately feels should be grateful they are allowed to use the platform at all. It makes those of us who are not music video creators feel unwelcome on Patreon.
6) Feedback: Being able to charge patrons for world-accessible content is one of a small and dwindling list of features that differentiated Patreon from cheaper competitors. Just sayin'.
7) Feedback: I thought you should know: my user experience has become that when I open Patreon to make a post, I have no idea whether I will be able to. I have to schedule an hour to engage with the Patreon new post workflow because I won't know what will be changed, what will be broken, etc. It would be nice if Patreon worked reliably. My experience as a creator-user of your site is NOT, "Oh, I don't like the choices available to me", it's that the site is unstable, flaky, unpredictable, unreliable.
Hi Siderea,Several observations:
Thank you so much for your thoughtful follow-up and for sharing your questions and feedback in such detail.
To address your first question, I can’t speak to whether this change was an oversight or a deliberate policy decision, but I can confirm there hasn’t been any official announcement about removing the ability to charge members for world-accessible posts. If anything changes or if we receive more clarity from our product team, I’ll be sure to keep you updated.
At this time, I also don’t have any news to share about whether this functionality will be restored or if it’s on the development roadmap.
I know that’s not the most satisfying answer, but I want to reassure you that your feedback and suggestions are being shared directly with the relevant teams. The more we can highlight how important this feature is for creators like you, the better.
Thank you as well for your suggestion about how this could be reintroduced in the UI—I’ll make sure to pass that along, along with your broader feedback about the impact on creators who fund public goods. Your perspective is incredibly valuable, and I just want to truly thank you for taking the time to lay it all out so clearly.
If you have any more thoughts, questions, or ideas, please let me know, and I’ll be happy to take a further look. I appreciate your patience and your willingness to advocate for the creator community.
All the best,
[REDACTED]
0) Whoa.
1) That is the best customer service response letter I've ever gotten, for reasons I will perhaps break down at some other junction. But it both does and does not read like it was written by an AI. I didn't quite know what to make of it, until someone mentioned to me the phenomenon of customer service agents at another org using AI to generate letters, and then I was like, oooooooh, maybe that's what this is. Or maybe not. Hard to say.
2) Though [REDACTED] could not confirm or deny, it sure sounds like an accident, but one that impacts such an uninteresting-to-Patreon set of creators that they can't be arsed to fix it, either in a timely way or at all.
3) "The more we can highlight how important this feature is for creators like you, the better." is a hell of a sentence. Especially in conjunction with "...along with your broader feedback about the impact on creators who fund public goods.". Reading between the lines, it sure sounds like the support people have been inundated by a little wave of outraged/anguished public-good posters, and the support people, or at least this support person, is entirely on the creators' side against higher ups brushing them off. Could be a pose, of course, but, dayum.
So that's what I know from Patreon's side.
The kludge I came up with for the post I made at the end of July is that I used another new feature – the ability to drop a cut line across a Patreon post where above it is world readable and below it is paid access only – to make a paid-access only post where 100% of the post contents are above the cut line.
Please let me know if it's not working as intended. This unfortunately has the gross effect of putting a button on my new post saying "Join to unlock".
So.
In any event, I strongly encourage those of you following me as unpaid subscribers over on Patreon to make sure you're following me, instead, here on Dreamwidth, because Patreon is flaky.
I will make a separate post with instructions as to all the ways to do that. You can get email notifications of my posts (either all or just the Siderea Posts), follow RSS and Atom feeds, get DM inbox notifications, and, of course, just follow me on your DW reading page, all on/through Dreamwidth, anonymously and completely free.
Daria Challange: The Doppleganger Rival
Aug. 19th, 2025 08:24 pmfardell24At Raft College, Daria Morgendorffer meets a classmate who is similar to her. She’s also called Daria with a long surname starting with M, auburn hair, cynical, in the same major and had spent High School in the town similar to Lawndale. They clash from the get go.
(no subject)
Aug. 19th, 2025 04:34 ammellowtiggerAfter work yesterday, I went to bed and slept for about 10 hours, plus another hour of fading in and out. I'm finally awake now, about 2 hours before I start the work routine again.
I had been exceptionally short on sleep for the past two nights, so it was good to catch up. The first night, it was my own fault for playing a computer game for too late and getting about 4 hours of sleep before work. The second night, it was another fire alarm going off for no reason. It interrupted my sleep 3 times that night and then I couldn't get back to sleep. Thankfully it hasn't misbehaved again, but I promised myself that I would personally disable the device the 4th time it goes off. These new 10-year fire alarms are not as good a deal as I originally thought. At least the ones with disposable batteries can be disconnected. These "permanent" alarms, though, can only be permanently disabled.
Before waking up this morning, I caught the end of another dream.
I was some kind of investigator, and I was pursuing a political-religious cult. I tracked them to large warehouse near a farm. I walked around the building with no windows. The building was shaped like the letter "L", and at the inner bend of the building, I could hear voices. Somebody was using a circular saw, and in between the loud noises of the saw, the people were yelling loudly, which I could hear through the cinder block walls. I don't remember now what they were saying, just that I could hear their voices.
Somehow, I had a pet cat with me (on a potentially dangerous investigation?), and it was sniffing around that corner too. I saw a pickup truck heading toward me. I had been spotted by their informal security, apparently. The guy driving the truck was unhappy with me being there. I said I was just following along with my cat who was exploring, and we'd be moving along when it was done. He was very unhappy but continued driving past me on his route around the building. I looked behind me, and my cat was actually a rabbit instead. Okay, I have a pet rabbit in this dream.
The rabbit and I continue along the edge of the building toward what seemed to be the front and a parking lot. Three people were walking toward the front door from the parking lot, and my rabbit dashed ahead near them to wait for me to catch up. When I caught up, then it dashed ahead toward our car. I think I opened the back hatch on the car, and the rabbit jumped in.
There was some more to the dream, driving between small towns on the road, stopping at a gas station somewhere. Then I woke up.
I have about 2 hours before I need to get ready for work again. Time to make the donuts. (YouTube)
road safety on the block
Aug. 17th, 2025 04:40 pmmellowtiggerTwo Thursdays ago, I had another emergency dental visit. 
After the dental visit, I discovered that I had a rash on my left arm. It remained there for many hours, but it was gone the next day. I have no idea what triggered it.
To recap (pun intended), at that molar tooth location I have now busted 1) the original tooth, 2) the repair work on it, and 3) two different temporary caps on it. Thankfully, I have a scheduled appointment tomorrow to get the final custom fitted metal crown for it. Hopefully that fix lasts my remaining years without further incident.
During the last week, we got new features on the block where I live. First, there appeared an actual roundabout in the middle of the previous intersection on the north end of my block. This is great news to prevent the cars speeding down my block at all hours of day and night. It hasn't been as much of a problem recently as it was several years ago. This will help, though. The city calls these roundabouts 3.7F traffic circles. There are plenty in my area already, but "mine" is new.
I have no idea what this means for fire trucks, though. The fire station is a few blocks directly north of me. They frequently travel down our block to get to locations quickly, because my street is the intersection right outside their fire station. They'll have to travel elsewhere now, maybe? Unless they just have to travel more slowly through intersections. Obviously the roundabout wouldn't be allowed to block emergency vehicles, but it does seem like an unusual impediment to their fast travel.
A few days later, my block also got not just 1 but actually 2 speed bumps!
That seems like overkill, but maybe the people pushing for speed bumps didn't know we were getting a roundabout. I had no idea. My block just got a whole lot safer for kids on the block.
(no subject)
Aug. 17th, 2025 12:22 pmludyGrrr! Spellcheck autocorrected we’re to were as I was typing it for some reason (Why?! Surely people are more likely to forget the apostrophe than accidentally add one in so we’re is much less likely to be a typo than were is) … and then had the audacity to tell me that what it had done with what I’d written now wasn’t grammatically correct!
It feels like in the rush of enthusiasm for all things AI that I’m ending up having to fight spellcheck/auto-suggestions more than in the past. They obviously aren’t training it on stuff written by dyslexics!
The suggestions seem to be more business-y now too
It feels like in the rush of enthusiasm for all things AI that I’m ending up having to fight spellcheck/auto-suggestions more than in the past. They obviously aren’t training it on stuff written by dyslexics!
The suggestions seem to be more business-y now too
Spider Quinn 18 A Birthday and Stormy Sonnets Part 2
Aug. 17th, 2025 06:47 pmfardell24Straight after they finished their meal, Daria and Jane went to the art staffroom, where they found Ms. Dafoe.
“Jane!” Ms. Dafoe exclaimed as she saw Jane come in.
“I’m fine. It’s the first critic who really had a bad experience.”
“I heard about that. But are you sure?”
“Yes. I haven’t had flashbacks yet. But there is something else we need to talk about,” Jane said.
“Oh?”
“There’s this poem I found,” Daria said.
“A poem?” Dafoe asked. “That isn’t really my area of expertise. But that is a form of expression I have some experience in.”
“The thing is, I found it at my father’s grave and it’s has significant influence from Shakespeare,” Daria said.
Claire took that in. It seemed unusual, but with what was going on in Lawndale lately, it didn’t seem that unusual.
“What do you think?” Daria asked.
“It definitely is Shakespearean,” Claire said. “But I see that you’re concerned because someone may have intense feelings for you.”
“Yes. But I’m careful anyway. I just have to be more so when visiting the cemetery,” Daria responded.
“Whoever it is, knows their Shakespeare,” Claire added. “That may narrow it down.”
“Especially at this school,” Daria quipped.
“Thanks for your time, Ms. Dafoe,” Jane said.
“But I wouldn’t go to Mr. O’Neill. You know how he is,” Claire said.
“It will be one of the other Language Arts teachers,” Daria said.
“Or Ms. Li. She was a Language Arts teacher before she was Principal,” Claire said,
( Read More )
“Jane!” Ms. Dafoe exclaimed as she saw Jane come in.
“I’m fine. It’s the first critic who really had a bad experience.”
“I heard about that. But are you sure?”
“Yes. I haven’t had flashbacks yet. But there is something else we need to talk about,” Jane said.
“Oh?”
“There’s this poem I found,” Daria said.
“A poem?” Dafoe asked. “That isn’t really my area of expertise. But that is a form of expression I have some experience in.”
“The thing is, I found it at my father’s grave and it’s has significant influence from Shakespeare,” Daria said.
Claire took that in. It seemed unusual, but with what was going on in Lawndale lately, it didn’t seem that unusual.
“What do you think?” Daria asked.
“It definitely is Shakespearean,” Claire said. “But I see that you’re concerned because someone may have intense feelings for you.”
“Yes. But I’m careful anyway. I just have to be more so when visiting the cemetery,” Daria responded.
“Whoever it is, knows their Shakespeare,” Claire added. “That may narrow it down.”
“Especially at this school,” Daria quipped.
“Thanks for your time, Ms. Dafoe,” Jane said.
“But I wouldn’t go to Mr. O’Neill. You know how he is,” Claire said.
“It will be one of the other Language Arts teachers,” Daria said.
“Or Ms. Li. She was a Language Arts teacher before she was Principal,” Claire said,
( Read More )
Church notes - 17th August 2025
Aug. 17th, 2025 03:55 pmfardell2417th
Psalm 95
Top down attentional effect. A way our brains work to avoid sensory overload. Focusing in on what we want to see. It affects our thinking in many ways, including in ways that make us anxious and worried.
Isaiah 6
vs 3
The glory of God overwhelms Isaiah, but he is cleansed (in aforeshadowing of what Jesus does for everyone who believes at the Cross).
The angel (or Jesus Himself) reassures Isaiah.
The glory of God shakes not only the Temple but the whole creation. The whole creation proclaims God's glory.
Psalm 23
He is with us, in us, as we go through the valley of the shadow of death.
Matthew 14:22 - 23
Peter walking on the water. He was fine while he focused on Jesus. But he began to sank when he focused on the storm around him.
Psalm 95
Top down attentional effect. A way our brains work to avoid sensory overload. Focusing in on what we want to see. It affects our thinking in many ways, including in ways that make us anxious and worried.
Isaiah 6
vs 3
The glory of God overwhelms Isaiah, but he is cleansed (in aforeshadowing of what Jesus does for everyone who believes at the Cross).
The angel (or Jesus Himself) reassures Isaiah.
The glory of God shakes not only the Temple but the whole creation. The whole creation proclaims God's glory.
Psalm 23
He is with us, in us, as we go through the valley of the shadow of death.
Matthew 14:22 - 23
Peter walking on the water. He was fine while he focused on Jesus. But he began to sank when he focused on the storm around him.
This past week I listened to Verity Weaver
Aug. 19th, 2025 07:42 pmconulyWhich I guess I can sum up as "trenchant criticism of capitalism, maybe a little preachy, not subtle at all". This might not sound like a big endorsement, but then again, I'm pretty sure most of you are Star Trek and even Babylon 5 fans, so actually it is!
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So, I may have said, the niblings' stepmother* has a new baby!
Aug. 18th, 2025 02:00 amconulyAnyway, E was looking at Halloween costume patterns and obviously your opinion doesn't really matter at all, only the parents' does, but I thought I'd put up a poll anyway. Which costume is best for a six or seven month old?
* Former stepmother, but the relationship is still there even if she's not with their dad anymore
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Poll #33490 Halloween costumes!
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 52
* Former stepmother, but the relationship is still there even if she's not with their dad anymore
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Voyager episodes!
Aug. 17th, 2025 01:01 amconulySo, we watched that one with the telepathic pitcher plant. Seven and Naomi bond - the writers really worked to make Naomi useful to the plot rather than just being kinda there, and it mostly works - but honestly, our space Ahab has chosen the least-efficient manner possible to destroy his whale.
Then we watch the two parter with the Borg Queen, in which we establish that the Hansens (whom Seven actually refers to as the Hansens) were absolutely terrible parents. I mean, even beyond the way they brought their child on a platter to be assimilated, growing up on a tiny spaceship with only two other people is just no life for a child. They should have left her at home. (And all the flashbacks establish that she spent a lot of her brief childhood scared. Poor baby!) At one point in this episode, Seven helps rescue a group of astonishingly passive refugees who are about to be assimilated. There's a lot of off-screen screaming, but I guess these refugees weren't paid enough to talk, because they're both passive and totally silent. Also, nobody at any points suggests trying to de-assimilate any drones, even the one who is probably Seven's father, if we can believe the Borg Queen. Seems a bit uncaring, but as I said, he wasn't a good father so fuck him, I guess.
This is followed by a kinda sad and pointless episode in which Harry Kim contracts love from having surprisingly racy (for 90s Trek) sex with a dissident from a xenophobic society. She achieves her primary objective, forcing the people in charge to allow those who want to leave their society to do so, but they still break up. He's sad about it. (E and I decided that the only other Varro with a speaking role has gotta be her dad. He sure acts like he knows her pretty well, and that ship has a lot more people than Voyager does!)
And then one of my absolute favorite episodes, the one where Tom and B'Elanna get married and there's apparently a new baby on the ship we haven't heard of before and, by the way, the ship is disintegrating. Lots of people hate this episode because it's sad and bleak and pointless, but I absolutely fucking love it.
We skipped the Chakotay episode because ugh, fake Native American fake spirituality, something something "vision quest", and then it was Think Tank, which is a very watchable episode. It's not great, it's terrible - it's watchable. Also, nobody really says it, but the spokesperson of the eponymous Think Tank is himself a victim of it. He was taken from them in childhood, which wasn't all that long ago. Possibly they all are victims except the founder. It sounds like being part of a particularly reclusive cult.
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Then we watch the two parter with the Borg Queen, in which we establish that the Hansens (whom Seven actually refers to as the Hansens) were absolutely terrible parents. I mean, even beyond the way they brought their child on a platter to be assimilated, growing up on a tiny spaceship with only two other people is just no life for a child. They should have left her at home. (And all the flashbacks establish that she spent a lot of her brief childhood scared. Poor baby!) At one point in this episode, Seven helps rescue a group of astonishingly passive refugees who are about to be assimilated. There's a lot of off-screen screaming, but I guess these refugees weren't paid enough to talk, because they're both passive and totally silent. Also, nobody at any points suggests trying to de-assimilate any drones, even the one who is probably Seven's father, if we can believe the Borg Queen. Seems a bit uncaring, but as I said, he wasn't a good father so fuck him, I guess.
This is followed by a kinda sad and pointless episode in which Harry Kim contracts love from having surprisingly racy (for 90s Trek) sex with a dissident from a xenophobic society. She achieves her primary objective, forcing the people in charge to allow those who want to leave their society to do so, but they still break up. He's sad about it. (E and I decided that the only other Varro with a speaking role has gotta be her dad. He sure acts like he knows her pretty well, and that ship has a lot more people than Voyager does!)
And then one of my absolute favorite episodes, the one where Tom and B'Elanna get married and there's apparently a new baby on the ship we haven't heard of before and, by the way, the ship is disintegrating. Lots of people hate this episode because it's sad and bleak and pointless, but I absolutely fucking love it.
We skipped the Chakotay episode because ugh, fake Native American fake spirituality, something something "vision quest", and then it was Think Tank, which is a very watchable episode. It's not great, it's terrible - it's watchable. Also, nobody really says it, but the spokesperson of the eponymous Think Tank is himself a victim of it. He was taken from them in childhood, which wasn't all that long ago. Possibly they all are victims except the founder. It sounds like being part of a particularly reclusive cult.
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