Daily Check-in

Aug. 26th, 2025 06:03 pm
starwatcher: Western windmill, clouds in background, trees around base. (Default)
[personal profile] starwatcher posting in [community profile] fandom_checkin
 
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Tuesday, August 26, to midnight on Wednesday, August 27. (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #33539 Daily Check-in
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 4

How are you doing?

I am OK.
3 (75.0%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
1 (25.0%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single.
2 (50.0%)

One other person.
1 (25.0%)

More than one other person.
1 (25.0%)




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.
 
cap_ironman_fe: (Default)
[personal profile] cap_ironman_fe posting in [community profile] cap_ironman


Title: The Florist and The Captain
Artist: DragonK
Writer: Hkandi
Universe: MCU
Rating: Gen
Fic Wordcount: 6647
Summary:
Steve comes across Tony's flower shop and starts to buy flowers for himself. Tony find himself with a massive crush on his new favorite customer, who Pepper swears is Captain America. But as Tony tells her, “Yeah, Pep, Captain America totally came in on a random Tuesday morning for flowers after happening to see our van,” he sarcastically said. “Of course it wasn’t him, just a ridiculously handsome guy who maybe looks a little like him, I guess.”

Link to DragonK's art and Hkandi 's fic on AO3
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

-- no wait that's a lie, I also investigated an apple tree. (Unremarkable eating apples.)

But! Tomatoes!

a lap full of tomatoes, in reds and oranges and greens and golds and purpleish

Pictured varieties: Purple Ukraine, Blue Fire, misc green stripey, Orange Banana, Moneymaker. Buried so you can't see it is a Feo di Rio Gordo. I did not get the whole rainbow I was aiming for this year (alas the Yellow Pearshaped all failed, as did the Known green stripey), but I'm nonetheless pleased!

[ SECRET POST #6808 ]

Aug. 26th, 2025 05:29 pm
case: (Default)
[personal profile] case posting in [community profile] fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #6808 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.


More! )


Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 18 secrets from Secret Submission Post #972.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
umadoshi: (Middleman - specificity (cannons_fan))
[personal profile] umadoshi
The other day, my phrasing when I tried to describe what the Glass Heart actors are doing was not at all as clear as it should've been!

So: It's not that the main cast in this show are faking playing the instruments. It's that none of them are musicians at all, and they learned to play the specific material for the show well enough to visually pass not only as being able to play but as being very good (the male lead is explicitly a musical genius), with full shots of them doing bits of it rather than having body doubles or clever cuts or anything, AND doing some pretty heavy-lifting acting at the same time. (What I don't know is whether their performances pass as looking professional to actual professional musicians, but one of the supporting cast is an actual singer and seems pretty impressed with it.)

The making-of feature I linked in my last post is specifically about that aspect of the show/their performances.
oursin: Photograph of James Miranda Barry, c. 1850 (James Miranda Barry)
[personal profile] oursin

Woman on social media claiming that "Cancer is trying to heal, not kill.... A cancerous tumor is basically a bag the human body creates to collect toxins that are contaminating the bloodstream." (Apparently this goes back to 2021? still in circulation because I spotted it in the wild today.)

Apart from anything else here, I'm trying to think how this actually works - okay, it collects the toxins, but she was also saying you shouldn't have operations or get involved with, you know, that nasty actual medicine? In particular that biopsies are Really Really Bad and cause the tumour to explode and spread toxins throughout the body. (This notion derives from one book by a struck-off doc relating to his theories about needle biopsies in the specific case of prostate cancer.)

But what is the mechanism once it's collected the toxins? does it just sit there? does it detach and float away? really one has questions. Does one want a bag of toxins just hanging about on one's body? (Maybe a wartcharmer might be called for?)

I was reminded of the theory, current for centuries, that there was 'good' pus which aided in the healing of wounds, so surgeons were all 'yay laudable pus'.

I wonder if anyone, ever, had the theory re TB, that the consumptive coughing up blood was getting rid of 'bad blood'*, jolly good, restored health is on the way....

*I'm sure I've previously mention my paternal grandmother who was reassuring about my copious and not infrequent nosebleeds in childhood and adolescence on the grounds that it was getting rid of 'the bad blood'. Yes, historian of medicine wishes I'd done an oral history interview about these lingering remnants of humoural theory.

Blue Beetle #22

Aug. 26th, 2025 05:42 pm
iamrman: (Power)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writer: Len Wein

Pencils: Ross Andru

Inks: Danny Bulanadi


Blue Beetle returns from the Millennium crossover to discover that dinosaurs have taken over Chicago.


Read more... )

dolorosa_12: (teen wolf)
[personal profile] dolorosa_12
I've had this Rebecca Solnit essay bookmarked for a few days, because it's such a clear distillation of my own personal and political outlook that rather than write the ten millionth iteration of my own 'behave as if you have agency' rant, I can now just point to Solnit's post and call it a day.

I might quibble with some of her specific illustrative examples, but the overall shape of what she's saying aligns exactly with my thinking. And while I'm on this topic, I'll add (yet again) that constant awareness raising about iniquities and atrocities absent any specific instructions about concrete action to take in response to those iniquities and atrocities provokes exactly the kind of demoralising, despairing-in-advance apathy Solnit deplores in her essay. The only people who should be raising awareness are those whose job it is to do so: people who work in the media, or people who functionally fill a media-like role (paid or unpaid) by virtue of the content they've decided to disseminate via social media, and the large audience they have there. Even in those latter cases, awareness-raising without context does more harm than good.

Hope is an action. This doesn't mean a naive, apathetic confidence in the status quo. It means being clear-eyed about the gravity of the situation and the potential societal and personal risks it causes, and using what agency remains to you as an individual, a community and a society to push back against the tide, without being overwhelmed by the knowledge that it will be a marathon, not a sprint, comprised of lots of tiny little moments of concrete action. (And being able to handle the fact that the greater the atrocities and injustices, the less likely it will be to stop them with one grand action, and to be able to acknowledge the weight of this without being steamrollered into apathetic despair.)

None of these complaints are directed at anyone on my Dreamwidth reading list, which (to my good fortune) is comprised of sensible, thoughtful people who are better than most at understanding the motivating (and demotivating) power of words and information. But I felt, in the wake of Solnit's post, that it was time to set out my own thoughts on this particular nexus of issues once again, with as much clarity as possible. (And thank you to [personal profile] muccamukk for giving me the push I needed to set words to screen.)

Knightfall: Batman #496

Aug. 26th, 2025 02:46 pm
iamrman: (Bon Clay)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writer: Doug Moench

Pencils: Jim Aparo

Inks: Josef Rubinstein


Batman gets triggered like somebody just said their mother's name was Martha.


Read more... )

Batgirl (2000) #1

Aug. 26th, 2025 01:01 pm
iamrman: (Buggy)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writers: Scott Peterson and Kelley Puckett

Pencils: Damion Scott

Inks: Robert Campanella


Best Batgirl, let’s goooo!


Read more... )

Amazing Spider-Man #110

Aug. 26th, 2025 10:47 am
iamrman: (Jeff)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writer: Stan Lee

Pencils and inks: John Romita, Sr.


Spidey does the Funky Gibbon. (Another niche reference for all you fellow old farts.)


Read more... )

Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

Aug. 26th, 2025 09:58 am
icon_uk: Mod Squad icon (Mod Squad)
[personal profile] icon_uk posting in [community profile] scans_daily
In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

That being said, the increasingly authoritarian stance of the current US administration continues to cause concern.

And petty cruelty being a feature not a bug becomes more evident with each passing day. Aside from everything else, Governor DeSantis of Florida ordered that the rainbow crosswalk outside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, put there as a memorial to the 49 people killed in the 2016 attack, be painted black again. Locals retaliated by colouring it back in with chalk.

Trying to get into Wednesday Season 2, though I'm not sure adding the whole family in so much works particularly well. If you want to make an Addams Family series with them, do that, but this is supposed to be a spin-off with a different focus.

On the other hand, I found that I have the original "Leverage" on demand, a series which had shockingly poor terrestrial access in the UK, so it's fun to go through and watch the seasons I never got to see.

(no subject)

Aug. 26th, 2025 09:52 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] hivesofactivity!
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

Recent Reading: The West Passage

Aug. 25th, 2025 05:41 pm
rocky41_7: (Default)
[personal profile] rocky41_7 posting in [community profile] books

Today I finished The West Passage by Jared Pachacek. This is a fantasy novel about a massive palace that encompasses the entirety of the state where the protagonists live and is ruled over by the godlike and somewhat tyrannical Ladies. The ancient Beast, the enemy of the Ladies, is threatening to rise again, as it has done in the past, which leaves our protagonists, Pell and Kew, youths of the Grey Tower, to try to raise the alarm.

I’m usually a fan of stories that throw you right into things, but The West Passage did leave me turned around for a while. I struggled to conceptualize what was being explained, and it’s definitely a book that asks a lot of your powers of visual imagination regarding the palace.

However, I loved the general creativity of this book. I don’t think I’ve ever read a fantasy novel so firmly and intentionally grounded in the medieval. A lot of Western fantasy is generically medieval/pseudo-medieval (a la the Ren Faire), but The West Passage clearly took time to more securely set itself in this era. The technology is not always strictly medieval, as this is a fantasy world with all manner of fantastical beasts and tools, but the medieval setting is far more than window dressing here. To cap off the mood, the book is peppered with charming medieval-style illustrations at the start of each chapter and separating each “book” within the novel, showing our protagonists on their adventure.
 

Read more... )

 

Daily Check-in

Aug. 25th, 2025 05:58 pm
starwatcher: Western windmill, clouds in background, trees around base. (Default)
[personal profile] starwatcher posting in [community profile] fandom_checkin
 
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Monday, June August 25, to midnight on Tuesday, August 26. (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #33535 Daily Check-in
This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 30

How are you doing?

I am OK.
16 (53.3%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
14 (46.7%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single.
10 (33.3%)

One other person.
14 (46.7%)

More than one other person.
6 (20.0%)




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.
 
cap_ironman_fe: (Default)
[personal profile] cap_ironman_fe posting in [community profile] cap_ironman

Title: Crisis Averted (Or Five Times Social Media Caused Problems and One Time It Didn't)
Artist: BladeoftheNebula
Writer: meshkol
Universe: MCU
Rating: Teen
Fic Wordcount: 6579
Summary:
When Tony wakes up and joins the other Avengers for a Bruce-made breakfast amidst shattered windows and a god-sized crater in his floor, he has to suffer Pepper’s fond exasperation and Steve's confused hurt before everyone remembers that Tony’s default state is dramatic with a side of unseriousness, obviously, and Jameson is just asking for a lawsuit.

Still, social media posts always come with the possibility of misinterpretation or miscommunication, even if it comes with a side of laughter.

Link to BladeoftheNebula's art and meshkol's fic on AO3

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cloudsinvenice: "everyone's mental health is a bit shit right now, so be gentle" (Default)
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