I'm being all organized and attempting to keep track of my food preferences somewhere useful for pointing people to it. I will add to it as I remember things (and/or people remind me), and am putting it into my "me FAQ" memories category.

Note: most of the time, food is so I stop being hungry and have energy and can think.

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I think I have managed to cause LJ to send me email when LJ people I want to follow who aren't on DW post to LJ, so the fact that I can't read my friends list shouldn't be as bad.

I liked LJ and my account there. Much sadness.

This entry was originally posted at http://wispfox.dreamwidth.org/1686202.html. You may comment here or there ( comments).

So I'm going to start posting to Dreamwidth and having it cross-post to LJ.

I'm going to try to keep reading LJ, but it turns out I can only read while logged in on my computer in FF. My phone's browsers don't load anything, and neither does Chrome on my computer.

This entry was originally posted at http://wispfox.dreamwidth.org/1686002.html. You may comment here or there ( comments).

This and the two parts that file are well worth a read: http://siderea.livejournal.com/1272731.html

Have you wondered how that happens?

For more information about how to indicate interest in being a panelist, go here:
http://www.arisia.org/ProgramParticipation

Or, to suggest a panel:
http://www.arisia.org/brainstorm

Lots of panels need more variety in their panelists, whether more women, more people of color, or other under-represented groups. So please, if you're interested, go say so. :)

Evidently planaria will kill and eat shrimps in a shrimp-only tank. Who knew!

At least now I know why my adult shrimps were dying...

I kill you with de-wormer! Hopefully! Will see if any wander past in the morning, and add a tiny bit more if not.

My betta loved the ones large enough for me to grab and dangle off my finger for her, though. It's _really weird_ being the target of a betta's attack (sort of; she was in fact attacking the planaria attached to my finger).

Poor shrimps.

http://www.libraryextension.com/?platform=hootsuite - checks if a book you are thinking about buying is available at the library you specify.

https://www.one-tab.com/ - click a button and it collects all open tabs (except ones that are pinned) into a website-like list. Saves memory and makes it less overwhelming to look at one's browser.

I was reminded a couple of days ago that Winter Sowing was a thing that I could be doing, by this possibly visible post on Facebook.

Since our gallon milk jugs are white plastic, and it was trash and recycle day the day after I was reminded, I went spelunking in our neighbors recycling bin... and found ~15 gallon water jugs. I shall clearly have to hunt again next week!

So after shoveling and snowblowing, yesterday was winter sowing day. First, I made drainholes and cut off the top of those water jugs. I got a bunch of dirt from Wilson Farms (sadly, this is not the time of the year they have the truly enormous bags of their own dirt), put ~3" of dirt in the bottom of each jug, soaked them in water and let them drain, planted seeds, put in a plant marker, sealed the jugs to their tops again with masking tape, and put them outside. I did this with about 10 of the jugs, and filled another three with dirt for later. I'm likely to want a _lot_ of jugs, since there are many seeds I'd like to start. Also likely to snag the larger (2 liter?) of the seltzer water bottles of galaneia's.

Currently planted: Lettuce (possibly too early), spinach, sorrel, corn salad (possibly too early), black Dinosaur kale, dwarf kale, bachelor buttons, broccoli of various types, purple podded peas.

Pending for this month: More peas, cilantro, delphinium, hollyhocks, lupine, penstemon digitalis, echineasea, colombine, Johnny jump up.

March: chard, carrots, cosmos, zinnias, marigold, basil, lettuce, nasturtium, sunflowers (this last largely to give them protection from the birds while they are growing their first real leaves)

April: tomatoes, ground cherries

I'm not clear on how I can be exhausted at 8p and go to bed, then spend two hours being too warm but too tired to do anything about it, then hungry and eat food and fix the blankets then too cold and then not enough weight and seriously, sleep?

Awake at 6a, also, for no apparent reason.

I may be a bit dazed today! 

rowyn asks interesting questions about problematic tropes in fiction.

I have not enough brain to respond myself, but thought someone of you might be interested and/or have thoughts to share.

"I wonder if saying this would be too politically incorrect?"

Me: "...probably."

Trying to do the homework that my students will be asking me about tomorrow makes me very aware of the fact that I have _no idea_ how to find an appropriate IPA vowel for the way I say "fan" (pan, can, Dan, etc).

*is confused at Wiki's audio IPA vowels*

Edit: I forgot rabbits, horses, and goats as options! Alas.

This is really cool. (American dialects)

And my curiosity appears to be back and _staying_ back. This appears to be strongly correlated to how chipper I'm being.

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It's often easier to remember things if I say them aloud, so for one of the questions I keep saying "inflect, derive, inflect, inflect, derive" and then either "yes", or I interrupt myself with "um..."

Also, periods of "yes, good, yes... what? No..." or "what?" followed by confusion probably sound pretty odd.

(grading is boring, so weird things occur to me! And apparently music means I can keep _doing_ it without insanity, but still boring)

In the context of my pending hair cut, being reassured that someone (who I have admittedly been dating a long time) is certain that I will continue to be beautiful with short hair, evidently makes for a mental stutter (hiccup? not sure).

IM may have meant my mental stutter was non-obvious, I have no idea. I did manage an appropriate thank you in a reasonable amount of time.

I think I was bemused for a number of reasons. First, the notification of pending short hair was meant to be informational. Mind you, we had just been talking about my leaving grad school, and I'd pointed him to my recent posts on the topic. (This was in large part both a 'fyi' and a 'this likely means I'm not visiting you this year'.) So he had good reason to believe I might need reassurance in general.

But, and I think this is the more interesting aspect, I have trouble thinking of myself as beautiful if the context is purely appearance-based. It's not that I don't think I'm attractive (although, yes, depression is not helpful there), but that to me the concept of physical beauty is both highly unusual (I think a _very_ small - perhaps nonexistent? - number of people are beautiful when based solely on appearance) and needs to be to the level of breathtaking/awe to make sense.

So what's beauty?

I can't think of a way I use it purely about people's appearances. A still photograph of someone just can't be beautiful to me. Water, sky, the play of light on things: things like this can be still shots and be beautiful to me. Not people. (and perhaps not animals or plants, either. Not without light/water/sky things going on)

Once you add motion, it's no longer just physical appearance. It's going to include how someone expresses themselves, how they move, how they carry themselves. Even if you ignore possible sound/vocal cues, there is a _lot_ of info in motion.

One example for which I am pretty consistent relates to graceful movement. If someone nearby is doing something graceful, and I notice and don't have a good reason not to, I will become entirely distracted and just watch. It's absolutely about awe and beauty and things for which words are not coming. And it is entirely possible that my jaw will actually drop.

I have a similar reaction to enthusiasm being shared with someone, where, if it's with me, it's usually stronger than if I just happen to get to watch other people enjoying that experience. Enthusiasm and glee about things are absolutely beautiful.

Other ways people move can be beautiful, although it's not often something I'll notice if I'm in the middle of a conversation with someone (paying attention to conversation trumps noticing physical things). I think it may still tend to involve either grace or enthusiasm, now that I think about it! Or sometimes the way the light catches someone.

Perhaps my bafflement at being called beautiful is simply that I don't have many contexts in which I find people beautiful. So it's a temporary (and often fleeting) thing ('estar'), not a constant thing ('ser'). Which, why do we not have two "to be" words like Spanish does?

What do you all find beautiful?

Went on my own on Monday now that I have a pass for the year.

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http://xkcd.com/1564/ - very much a thing I have thought (and I'm not a sociologist).

If you decide to make s'mores in your toaster oven, even if you usually prefer dark chocolate, milk chocolate is much wiser. First, dark chocolate will go liquidy and stay that way the entire time you are trying to eat it. Second, it stays _quite_ hot. Also, ow.

And now you know!

Exploring recent research on robotics and virtual agents and immersive virtual environments and whatever else I get distracted by while trying to select a useful topic for my fourth year project (and dissertation).

I doubt we have the hardware for the immersive virtual environment stuff, alas.

*continues exploring*

Expensive, so not buying it, but yay for existing!

https://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/product-DPTS1/?PID=I:digitalpaper:digitalpaperproductpage

The background on a fellow grad student's computer was this shirt. I kept giggling for a while. :)

http://www.snorgtees.com/never-trust-an-atom-they-make-up-everything

But it's _SO WARM_.

Even just a little bit of work in the garden had me dripping sweat.

*checks wunderground*

Oh. It's 90.

Yeesh.

I hope it rains soon.

Or touch?

I was outside briefly to put things in the shed, and was all "I want to take a picture of the smells!"

After a pause, I was bemused to realize that no, I cannot photograph the smell of our lilacs in bloom. Nor the feel of things.

Why not?!

Free things on Fridays this summer

Me, I think the MIT museum on June 26th, Garden in the Woods on June 31st, Tower Hill Botanical Garden on July 17th, Arnold Arboretum at Harvard or Fruitlands Museum on July 24th, Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park on Aug 7th, Franklin Park Zoo on Aug 21st, and the EcoTarium on Aug 28th all sound interesting.

I also still mean to go to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (mostly for what I hear about the Courtyard) at some point.

Some of why I read the LJs of some of the authors I read:

Seanan's Pike's Peak keynote speech.

This is very confusing. Did you know it's not Thursday today?! How does that work?

I have no idea at _all_ where my water bottle went. I has a sad. Need to get a strap for the silver one I got from school, as it's at least also metal, even though it holds less water than the missing brilliant green one.

Also, it was _WAY_ warmer out than I expected when I walked to school. So many layers removed. Probably going to go grab a handy skirt that's in my bag from last week to wear to Squares as it'll likely be too warm for leggings.

The weather _looked_ like it'd be cool today! Maybe it'll be cooler later.

My sweatshirt with the winged wolf on it has a URL on it. Who knew (evidently people who are looking at it. ;)? Maybe eventually - when I have money - I will replace my disintegrating... aw, no. They don't still have a big cat wheel. I _could_ replace my Gryphon Wheel, though.

From haikujaguar, On How Being in the Majority Exacerbates Bias.

Things male tech colleagues have actually said.

Why don't we have something better than latex condoms?

Stock photographers need a lesson in saxophones - and probably other instruments!

"Cuddling someone into submission"

Why might one be doing this? Discuss!

[edit: Huh, ok. I was being silly with that question, and got no silly answers! Admittedly, I am an excellent example of someone who often _needs_ to be cuddled into submission!]