twitter_refugees | Member Posts

Today we went to the Small Business Fest held just outside Booth Library at Eastern Illinois University. It was several times bigger than we expected, which was awesome. It wrapped around the entire square, and one side had booths down both sides of the walkway. This was nearly the size of the old Celebration fest, with very similar offerings. They do this twice a year now, spring and fall.

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Current Mood: happy

ysabetwordsmith

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

What would a perfect city be like?

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Truckloads of food are being wasted because computers won’t approve them

Modern food systems may look stable on the surface, but they are increasingly dependent on digital systems that can quietly become a major point of failure. Today, food must be “recognized” by databases and automated platforms to be transported, sold, or even released, meaning that if systems go down, food can effectively become unusable—even when it’s physically available.

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is mostly sunny and mild.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 4/11/26 -- We went out to a Small Business Fest today. We spent about 3 1/2 hours there, a lot longer than expected, but it was four or five times the size I expected and really awesome. :D But now my nose is pink from the sun and my legs feel like they're about to fall off, so that limits my yardening potential for the day.

On the way into town, we saw two turkey vultures visiting the remains of a possum at the edge of the yard.

EDIT 4/11/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 4/11/26 -- I potted up most of the remaining flowers.

EDIT 4/11/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I potted up the last of the flowers.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night. *goflopnow*

Current Mood: busy

vriddy

I was growing really antsy about the missing notifications because day after day the tickets were piling up yet the problem didn't seem to get acknowledged anywhere (not in the known issues on the support page, not on

dw_maintenance, no replies to those tickets... I even went to check the dreamwidth github issues but crickets there too :C).

Anyway, behold! A few of the (many, many) tickets about notifications were updated with the following:

"Our developers have been looking into this and finally figured out what was going on. There's a fix in, and notifications should start flowing again. I can't say if you'll get the old ones, but new ones should be fine."

I can't wait! Thanks to the "Recent Comments" page which I'm checking first like a kinda inbox, I'm fairly sure I'm not missing anything posted anywhere on my journal. Unfortunately, because I have a couple of active posts at the moment, the "Recently Posted" page isn't as useful to me and if someone replies a couple of weeks later to a comment I left on their journal, which is usually one of Dreamwidth's strengths, I'm unlikely to see it if the notification gets dropped :C

Glad a fix is on the way and hope it's coming to us soon!! To all the chit-chat and associated notifications!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😆 (Yes I'm constantly trying to get my inbox under control but not like this 😱 XD)

ysabetwordsmith

Scientists think dark matter might come in two forms

Dark matter may come in two flavors—finally explaining why its signals appear in some galaxies but vanish in others.

A mysterious glow of gamma rays at the center of the Milky Way has long hinted at dark matter, but the lack of similar signals in smaller dwarf galaxies has cast doubt on that idea. Now, researchers propose a bold twist: dark matter might not be a single particle at all, but a mix of two different types that must interact with each other to produce detectable signals.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Did you grow up regularly playing board games (either with your family, or in other contexts)? Do you feel that this affected the prominence (or lack of prominence) of board games in your later life?

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy and mild.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

I am excited to see that the yellow violet has propagated itself, and now there are two little clumps blooming in the forest garden. :D

EDIT 4/10/26 -- I pulled weeds out of two pots so I can plant pansies and violas in them.

I've seen a male cardinal and heard a squirrel barking.

EDIT 4/10/26 -- I made one pot with a black viola and a black pansy, intending to add some other black plant later. I made another with a black viola, a black pansy, a purple-and-white viola, a blue-shaded viola, and a white alyssum. I watered the pots and added some sticks to discourage squirrels from digging in them.

I also tested out a trick that I saw in a video. Take a large garden staple, push the tines down into a narrow pot, squeeze together like tongs, and pull the plant out. It takes a bit of practice to make it work, but it does work better than other methods I have tried for safely extracting plants from those multipacks.

EDIT 4/10/26 -- I made a pot with a black viola, a black pansy, a purple-and-yellow pansy, and a white alyssum.

The weather is turning cooler and the breeze is picking up.

EDIT 4/10/26 -- I made 3 pots with various shades of purple, yellow, and orange pansies and violas. For now these are on the white planters alongside the big pot of mixed Johnny-jump-ups.

EDIT 4/10/26 -- I made a pot with a mauve pansy, a couple different violas, and a white alyssum.

EDIT 4/10/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 4/10/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

chicating

--pediatric
--borderline incomprehensible(I don't have to look for fights!)
I get so angry when I think of all of my time that they've wasted. I think I could have spent a few weeks in Australia if I could have the part of my life back they wasted on meetings, papers and blah, blah. all to keep things going that don't really make me happy.

vriddy

1. Tracking writing-related stuff daily so doesn't work for me and my brain. I track wordcounts only monthly for a reason!! Because I was planning to finish this proofreading within two weeks or so, I thought I would therefore update my little chart thing to track by day rather than by week so the chart looks more interesting. It does look cool! But tracking daily means I read high numbers as "This is what I am capable of" and any day in which I could only manage 15 minutes or so as a failure. May have to weeklify this chart after all.

2. Especially because, while finishing within two weeks would be convenient for a variety of reasons, I'm not sure the proofreading will go as fast as I hoped. My thought were: okay, the story is a third longer than it was last time I proofread it, but only the new stuff might sound janky! Well. It's been over a year since the last time I proofread, so sentences give me different feelings now. The first chapter hadn't changed a ton, maybe 600 new words, but I spent 3h on it anyway. Just like the average last round: proofread 10 chapters in a little under 3 weeks, average time per chapter 2h54. I have 14 chapters now. Grumbles, grumbles.

3. Thinking a lot about what I want to learn next. The last couple of years have been about "process" especially around editing, what works well for me in general, how to actually edit a big project, how to manage my stamina through it. Over the last couple of months, I've been learning about structure, and loving it. Like, there will be more to learn there for sure, but for the time being I need to put into practice my new learning until it comes more naturally. While this is happening, I really want to improve how I write sentences. Line editing, I guess? My writing feels very weak there right now, or not where I'd like it to be. It won't be something I apply on the witch (would require a complete rewrite), but it's something I hope to pay more attention to for the Soul Thief. Reflecting too on how I want to learn and how I could organise myself for it. For example, I got a copy of Le Guin's "Steering the Craft" a while back that sounds like it should fit the bill? But I found it very intimidating, and I'm not good at just doing exercises either. It's easier when learning happens as part of a real story. Anyway, whatever I end up doing next, it seems like I'm moving from a "learning process" to a "learning craft" kinda mood, for the next while!

ysabetwordsmith

Today's theme is Meditation.

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Prairie plants reveal a hidden defense against climate extremes

It looks peaceful – but these places are basically training grounds for weather whiplash.

A new study says prairies really do have a built-in advantage when the climate gets nasty: biodiversity helps. But it’s not as simple as the old slogan “more species = more resilience.”

The researchers found that different kinds of biodiversity matter depending on the kind of extreme – drought versus flood – and that nuance could matter a lot as heat, floods, and dry spells become more common.

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

This poem came out of the April 7, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from

ravan. It also fills the "Exception" square in my 4-1-26 card for the Flower Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by

janetmiles. It belongs to the series Monster House.

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

This poem came out of the April 7, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by

janetmiles. It also fills the "Request" square in my 4-1-26 card for the Flower Fest Bingo.

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

This poem came out of the April 7, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from

siliconshaman. It also fills the "Request" square in my 4-1-26 card for the Flower Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by

janetmiles. It belongs to the series One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis. It directly follows "Someone Who Was Trying to Be Sober" so read that first or this won't make much sense.

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Current Mood: busy

althea_valara

We're coming to the time of year when

3weeks4dreamwidth usually runs, and

goodbyebird posted an interest check post in the community to see if folks were interested in doing it and what their plans might be for it.

I will be posting an updated list of my community recs post. The last time I posted it was in January for

snowflake_challenge, but I've stealth added a few more since then. I'm ALWAYS on the lookout for good communities, so if you know of any and want to see it added to the list, let me know!

I also am giving some thoughts to posting daily during the duration, but I'd need something to post about. I'm considering the following:

1. one creative thing I did today
2. one thing I'm proud of today
3. video game progress? I play video games daily, so that would be something easy I could do

It's the time of night when I turn into a sack of goo, so I have no brain for anything else at the moment. Guess I'd better brush my teeth and go to bed.

Current Mood: tired

ysabetwordsmith

This poem came out of the April 7, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from

alatefeline and a previous discussion with

siliconshaman about the life aspects of geodes. It also fills the "Lilac" square in my 4-1-26 card for the Flower Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by

janetmiles. It belongs to The Blueshift Troupers series.

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Current Mood: busy

chicating

getting a refund makes me feel guilty. It's not really my job to keep these writing classes open, and it's not like I promised someone specific that I'd do it with her.(Part of me still wish I'd just said "yes" but the money might come in handier than feeding my dumb brain, anyway.
(Part of me has always been holding out for something more passionate than me being a good little girl with my notebook, also, though, I have to admit that.)

Current Mood: guilty

ysabetwordsmith

Scientists discover spice synergy that boosts anti-inflammation 100x

Mixing everyday plant compounds may unlock a powerful, hidden anti-inflammatory effect far greater than any single ingredient alone.

Chronic inflammation often works quietly in the background but can fuel serious diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. New research reveals that everyday plant compounds—like menthol from mint, cineole from eucalyptus, and capsaicin from chili peppers—can team up inside immune cells to dramatically boost their anti-inflammatory power. While individual compounds showed modest effects, certain combinations amplified results hundreds of times over by activating different cellular pathways at once.

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Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is sunny and warm with howling wind. :/ The wind really complicates my plans to plant anything today, so I'm trying to think of ways to compensate for that.

I fed the birds. I've seen a fox squirrel on the ground and at the hopper feeder.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 4/9/26 -- I used salvaged string to fasten together 4 white single-pot plant stands, with the taller 2 in back and shorter 2 in front, forming a square. Due to the angled legs, it is not snug, but at least they are more stable than any one would be alone.

EDIT 4/9/26 -- I put the pot of mixed Johnny-jump-ups on one of the tall white plant stands. This is not necessarily its final location, but allows me to get it out of the house without exposing it to too much wind.

I sorted out the black single-pot stands. There is a tall one, a medium one, and two short ones. I started by fastening the tall one to a folding multipot stand.

I've seen a flock of house finches, a male goldfinch molting, and a male cardinal.

EDIT 4/9/26 -- I did more work securing the black one-pot planters. There's one left to attach. Progress.

EDIT 4/9/26 -- I finished securing the last black planter. The resulting structure, while not perfectly tight, is still a great deal more stable overall due to more legs connected in some manner. It doesn't have to look fancy, just do better than last year's constantly tipping pots.

I've seen several sparrows in the forest garden.

It got up to 80°F today, but is cooling down now.

EDIT 4/9/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 4/9/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 4/9/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

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Fandom's Last Bastion

Where Tweets Come to Die

Member Posts

Today's Adventures

Philosophical Questions: City

Food

Birdfeeding

PSA update regarding the Dreamwidth notifications

Space Exploration

Gaming

Birdfeeding

State webinar was...

Quickly jotting down a few proofreading-related notes

Follow Friday 4-10-26: Meditation

Nature

Poem: "The Grabber"

Poem: "So DONE with It All"

Poem: Their Hidden Source

gearing up for 3W4DW

Poem: "Beautiful, Tough, Shiny, Resilient"

I don't know why...

Food

Birdfeeding

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October 2024

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