Something fishy!

Thursday, 12 June 2025 22:18
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

Today for work, I saw someone spell fisticuffs as "fisty cuffs" and a) that is adorable and b) it also makes me realize what a strange word fisticuffs is!

So naturally I looked it up.

c. 1600, fisty cuffes, from fist (n.) + cuff (n.) "a blow", with the form perhaps in imitation of handiwork.

Well! That's such a boring etymology, but... nice to see the spelling returned to something more like the original!

I said this on fedi and a friend's response has been delighting me ever since:

I always misread it as fishticuffs, so always had an image in my head of some kind of betta fish boxing, complete with gloves over fins

That made me giggle. They're an artist so I asked if they would draw this some time. I am wondering how a fish gets boxing gloves on its fins...

365 Questions 2025

Thursday, 12 June 2025 11:47
maju: Clean my kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] maju
10. If today was the last day of your life, would you want to do what you are about to do today? I don't see why not, but I'd be extremely disappointed if I had to spend the day away from any of my family.

11. If today was the last day of your life, who would you call and what would you tell them? I would call my daughters and tell them I love them and I'm proud of them.

(I can't say I'm a fan of questions that start with "If today was the last day of your life…" It's too much of a reminder of how little time I've got left compared to how much I've already had.)

12. Who do you dream about? I don't normally dream about people, even people I know. although I have had a couple of dreams about S. Generally if people appear in my dreams they are strangers.

(no subject)

Thursday, 12 June 2025 11:34
maju: Clean my kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] maju
My morning started off well enough; I woke up a couple of minutes before my alarm and was able to go for a good walk just after 6 am, while it was still pleasantly cool outside. Things went slightly off the rails while I was getting my breakfast ready though. I'm not sure exactly how it happened (I think I turned around too quickly) but I knocked over my cup of tea just as I was about to spread marmalade on my toast, and the hot tea spilled right onto the front of my right thigh. Luckily the tea wasn't quite still at boiling temperature, but I hadn't yet added milk so it was quite hot. I stepped out of my wet shorts as quickly as I could and then got into the bath and ran cold water over the leg for a while before going back to the kitchen to deal with the mess.

I was eventually able to make myself another cup of tea and warm up my toast, but breakfast wasn't as enjoyable as it might have been. My leg was quite painful for a couple of hours but it's feeling much better now. The burns are still very red but there doesn't appear to be any blistering. I was afraid it would be much worse than this.

Accidents like this are one reason why I'm nervous about living alone. I'll be relieved to be closer to my daughter in due time.

AI

Thursday, 12 June 2025 10:55
catness: (gotcha)
[personal profile] catness
I came across a haunting fanfic (a short poem) that strongly implies (without saying it explicitly) that a certain fictional character was Jack the Ripper. I was curious if this allusion could be detected by an AI, and asked 3 of them (ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini) to analyse the poem and note any hidden meanings. While their analysis was detailed and mostly on point, none of them guessed it! Moreover, even after I revealed the secret, Copilot asked if this interpretation could be intentional or accidental. Even though it is blindingly obvious to any reader who's into Jack the Ripper lore. (The other two agreed right away that it was brilliant and absolutely fitting.)

It's like what I had posted a while ago, about puns that AI can't understand. I wonder when they will be able to look deeper into the context and put all the clues together...?

On the positive side, with the help of Copilot's clarifying questions (it can never stop a conversation by itself, provoking the user to keep chatting ;) I came up with a satisfying ending/resolution of the story, and ChatGPT even wrote a couple of snippets for me. I guess it can be used to scratch an itch, if you can't find a fanfic you want to read... The problem is, you need to know exactly what to write, with all the twists... whenever I asked to write something from a vague prompt, the results were rather boring.

[#262 | Soulmates] Challenge Post

Wednesday, 11 June 2025 22:23
fanweeklymod: (Default)
[personal profile] fanweeklymod posting in [community profile] fandomweekly
Challenge 262:
SOULMATES
n. a close friend or romantic partner with whom one has a unique deep connection based on mutual understanding and acceptance

Soulmates – a myth, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, or something a little more supernatural? Maybe soulmates are just someone you have a special connection with; maybe they’re something mystical, something predestined for you one way or another, a kind of magic found in special marks or mind-links. Or maybe they don’t exist at all.

Do your characters believe in soulmates? Do they have one, or want one? Is it an option at all for them?

Write a story about soulmates.

BONUS GOAL: “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

If your submission features this line, it will earn an extra point to be tallied in voting!


Challenge ends Monday, June 16 at 9:00PM EST.
• Post submissions as new entries using the template in the profile
• Tag this week's entries as: [#] submission, 262 – soulmates
• If you have questions about this challenge, please ask them here

[#261 | Schemes] Results Post

Wednesday, 11 June 2025 22:22
fanweeklymod: (Default)
[personal profile] fanweeklymod posting in [community profile] fandomweekly
Here are this week's votes tallied, and below the cut are our winners for Challenge #261 – Schemes!

This week's finalists are... )

Total Challenge Words Written: 3134

Congratulations to both of you, and thank you to everyone who took the time to cast their votes! [personal profile] autobotscoutriella will be making this week’s banners, so keep an eye out for those next weekend.

You may now post your Challenge 261 entries to any additional communities, blogs, archives or sites as you'd like! We also have a FandomWeekly AO3 Collection if you'd like to add your stories there!

They say I got brains

Wednesday, 11 June 2025 22:59
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

My ex-husband knows and thinks and cares so much about Brian Wilson that I feel like I shared a polycule with the man.

Wandering around the house tonight, doing the last chores of the evening while the Doof is finishing up, I hear "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" and I still know all the words, still remember the pained 20somethings Andrew and I were when we met and he introduced me to this weird lonely musician and all his feelings which were also our weird lonely feelings.

There was always something terribly melancholy for me in Brian Wilson's music -- there's a demo of "Still I Dream of It" that used to make me so sad that just thinking about the song made me cry uncontrollably -- and all the more once I left my marriage and never really listened to the Beach Boys any more. And the odd time I hear them, on the radio or like now, I'm always a little thrown by how weird the commercially-released songs sound, without all the unreleased versions layered over them in my mind because those were more common in my marital home (like I said: Not a parasocial relationship for me, but a parasocial metamour).

D made sure I heard the news, and I texted Andrew once I did. I just couldn't let such a thing go by without saying I was thinking of him.

I think both Brian Wilson and Andrew eventually "found the thing they can put their heart and soul in to," as the song goes, and I'm really glad for that.

(no subject)

Wednesday, 11 June 2025 13:01
maju: Clean my kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] maju
It's another pretty day, but very humid. I went for a run before 7 and came back drenched in sweat. (Of course that's normal for this time of year.) I was woken up around 11 pm by extremely heavy rain, but it didn't last very long and as far as I could tell it didn't rain at all after that.

I keep thinking I should do something different instead of keeping more or less to the same routine and the same pursuits every day, but I don't want to do things alone. One of my sisters is travelling in Australia with a caravan (with her husband) for a minimum of two years (they've been travelling for almost a year already), another sister and her husband are on a short road trip in Canada right now, and a third sister and her husband have just returned home from a six week hiking trip with their caravan in another state. (She hiked, her husband was backup with the car and caravan.) I am so envious of all of them because they still have someone to share travel adventures with.

(no subject)

Wednesday, 11 June 2025 15:41
angrboda: Viking style dragon head finial against a blue sky (Default)
[personal profile] angrboda
Husband ordered all the bits for an increasingly necessary computer upgrade for me a few days ago. I will also have to replace my beloved G604 mouse, because it's gone a bit wonky. Have come across an immensely cool looking replacement, which I now covet and it should be available by the end of this month (unless, it seems, I want to either pay more for it or buy it from a shop that I don't know if it's dodgy or not. I can wait.)

We are uncertain about how many times Husband has upgraded me, so I will have to abandon the naming scheme. It doesn't work when we can't remember if the new iteration will be III or IV... (System name is currently just Desky, so not the full and formal name (which would be Trusty Desky II. Or III...). No help there.)

Our Ukrainian Guests

Thursday, 12 June 2025 08:57
kitarella_imagines: Profile photo (Default)
[personal profile] kitarella_imagines
I live in a small English country village, the war in Ukraine has only been on the news so far, I haven't met any Ukrainians who had to emigrate to Britain.

But today our food delivery driver arrived, he had a strong Eastern European accent and was obviously struggling to find the right words. There are a lot of Eastern Europeans living round here, most are Polish, Slovenian, Lithuanian, but I tentatively asked where he was from and he said "Ukraine."

I was so delighted to meet a Ukrainian, someone who is safe from the war going on in their own country. I shook hands with him, I rarely do that but it was a sign of solidarity, I hope he understood that. We had a nice chat about how he liked where he now lives in a nearby village, but obviously I didn't want to ask him too many questions about anything in case I touched a nerve.

He looked like a young man, but his hair was almost totally grey. That says it all.

Slava Ukraini 💪💙💛

This morning has been too much

Wednesday, 11 June 2025 12:48
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

I didn't write here yesterday, but what I said on fedi last night was 'Tomorrow is going to be an absolutely disgusting day at work: stressful meetings, grim topics to dwell on..."

The stressful meetings weren't as bad as I expected. Though they were tiring. Lots to think about.

Then some other stuff happened that inspired a household conversation about logistics. All fine, very glad we can do the things we can do. But, more to think about.

Then I got a letter inviting me to my first in-person PIP (UK welfare benefits for disabled people) assessment in a decade.

It's next week, on the day of an important work thing.

At 9 in the morning.

In a part of the city I don't know at all. I don't want D to drive me but I'll have to do a practice run myself if I want to get the bus there. They always pick weird buildings that look like all the other buildings, or some industrial park miles from anywhere, or something inaccessible.

Anyway, back to work: I now have to spend the afternoon paying close attention to the Government's spending review, which is bound to make me angry and frustrated.

Questionnaire- multifandom questions

Wednesday, 11 June 2025 11:35
kitarella_imagines: (writing)
[personal profile] kitarella_imagines
So my dear [personal profile] svgurl showed me this Questionnaire: 72 Multifandom questions to ask a fangirl. It is from here https://maevedarcy.dreamwidth.org/10081.html but I don't know how to do a fancy link.

Anyway! I haven't got enough information to answer 72 questions, so I just chose my favourite 20. It's very quiet on Dreamwidth right now, so why not?

My chosen 20 questions:

1. How did you first discover your main fandoms?

MotoGP—I've watched motorsport for the last 30 years and about 10 years ago I noticed the RPF fandom, which was quite new back then with a small group of writers.

But I have an ever changing list of other fandoms. At the moment my favourite is The Professionals but also Downton Abbey, Blake’s 7 and Our Flag Means Death are recent ones. I change them all the time as I get interested in new ones or rediscover old fandoms.

Downton Abbey was actually my first fanfic writing experience. I love period dramas and I loved Thomas Barrow immediately. The gay outcast, forced to be cynical as he knows he will never find love. I couldn’t resist him!

With The Professionals and Blake’s 7, I ‘discovered’ them in the 1970s/80s and in those days I had no idea what fanfiction and fandoms were. I just liked the shows, as I was a preteen and teenager back then. I watched them, then forgot about them as I grew up, did different things with my life, then re-found them in the last few years and started writing fanfics about them.

With Our Flag Means Death, I just heard about this unusual new show about pirates, and started watching as soon as it arrived in England. I haven’t seen a show like that before and loved it!

2. What was it about the fandom(s) that initially captured your interest?

Read more... )

(no subject)

Tuesday, 10 June 2025 15:57
maju: Clean my kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] maju
From inside looking out you'd think it's a perfect day: clear and sunny, but looks can be deceiving because it's much warmer out there than I like. No doubt many people are enjoying this weather though.

I've occasionally been buying frozen meals from the supermarket lately (instead of subscribing to a meal delivery service); I intersperse these with meals I've cooked myself from scratch just so that I don't have to cook so often. Most of them have been good (better than most of the meal delivery service meals) but one or two have been "nope, never again". I can't help wondering how nutritious these meals might be. They sound good according to their lists of ingredients (no unpronounceable chemicals) so I'm hoping for the best. A few days ago I bought a "family sized" meal which says it has three and a half servings, but I divided it into three servings and the servings weren't all that big. And why would you make three and a half servings anyway? Why not four, or just three?

[#261 | Schemes] Voting Post

Monday, 9 June 2025 21:36
fanweeklymod: (Default)
[personal profile] fanweeklymod posting in [community profile] fandomweekly
Here are the entries for this challenge:

List of entries )

Please Note: Because we only have 4 entries this week, there is only a First Place and Runner Up to vote for!

In order to vote, please reply to this post using the form provided. All comments are screened, and entries are listed in the order they were submitted. For your vote to qualify, you must fill out your entire voting card (both spots) in order to be counted. Winner votes are worth 2 points, Runner Up votes are worth 1 point. Meeting the bonus goal on an entry gets an extra point for that submission.

When voting, please copy/paste the ENTRY NUMBER and the FIC TITLE from the list above into the spot you're voting for (this prevents accidentally mis-numbering a vote and casting it for the wrong entry). It should look like this:

First Place: 61. Fic Title Here
Runner Up: 88. Another Fic Title

Please note that you cannot vote for your own entry, and that votes cannot be made anonymously. You do not have to be a member of the community in order to vote, nor have submitted an entry for this week; everyone is welcome to participate in the voting. IP addresses are logged to prevent duplicate voting.



Voting closes Wednesday, June 11, at 9:00PM EST.

[#261] Broken Trust (QZGS)

Monday, 9 June 2025 19:09
[personal profile] yoshishisha posting in [community profile] fandomweekly
Theme Prompt: 261 - schemes
Title: Broken Trust
Fandom: Quánzhí Gāoshǒu|King's Avatar
Rating/Warnings: No
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 510
Summary: Su Mucheng has had enough of those schemes.
2nd person POV )

365 Questions 2025

Monday, 9 June 2025 14:38
maju: Clean my kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] maju
7. Do you see to believe or believe to see? I think I see to believe. If I can't see (or read/hear/touch) something it's harder to believe it. This is why I had such a hard time as a church goer; I was expected to believe in something/someone completely intangible and it wasn't possible for me to do so, with the result that I always felt like a fraud. It was a huge relief to eventually leave church-going behind; finally I felt that I was being honest.

8. How are you pursuing your dreams right now? I seem to be fresh out of dreams at the moment.

9. What’s the next big step you need to take? Packing up everything in my house (either to take with me or to discard) and moving to Connecticut.

(no subject)

Monday, 9 June 2025 14:31
maju: Clean my kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] maju
Every year I know I have to file a FBAR (report of foreign bank and financial accounts); every year I put it off until the last minute (it's due on 15th June), and every year, it's relatively easy and I wonder why I have such a mental block about it. I have no problem with preparing for and having taxes done, but this FBAR thing looms threateningly until I finally get it done. In other words, today was the day and it took me at most half an hour from start to finish.

This morning I went through another couple of shelves of books deciding what to keep and what to dispose of. I haven't moved anything off those shelves yet, but I have decided what to do with the books.

The weather is very undecided today; it started out cloudy and misty and has been alternately sunny and cloudy ever since. While I was running early this morning, at one point the mist was heavy enough to leave droplets on my glasses lenses, but that was only for a short time.

Last night, yet again, I had trouble falling asleep, so I got up and read for a while. This is getting old.