My last painting

Apr. 28th, 2026 04:18 am
embracingcalm: Sunset (Default)
[personal profile] embracingcalm posting in [community profile] art
painted this a couple weeks ago. It’s acrylic on paper. Last year I had some traumatic health issues and as a result was unable to paint or draw anything. This painting broke that block so, I thought I would share it.

[syndicated profile] jalopnik_feed
Over 50 years ago, there were collapsible spare tires available that expanded when air was added, and saved a lot of space in the trunk of your car.

Tuna Meltdown by roger-rozander (SFW)

Apr. 28th, 2026 08:48 pm
mific: (Heated rivalry)
[personal profile] mific posting in [community profile] fanart_recs
Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: Shane Hollander (/Ilya Rozanov)
Content Notes/Warnings: sound might be a bit loud!
Medium: digital art, made into a gif
Artist on DW/LJ: n/a
Artist Website/Gallery: roger-rozander on tumblr
Why this piece is awesome: An amusing gif made from the artist's digital art, celebrating the infamous tuna meltdown. Make sure to check out this artist's portrait of Ilya with a red background too - it's a stunner.
Link: Tuna Meltdown, backup link here

wolffyluna: A green unicorn holding her tail in her mouth (Default)
[personal profile] wolffyluna posting in [community profile] c_ent

For Fandom Trumps Hate this year, I offered to record podfic. The winner of my auction requested podfic that was:

  • for the BeefLeaf ship for Tian Guan Ci Fu
  • 5-10k words long
  • had a happy or hopeful ending

And I am having a little trouble finding such a fic that the author has given permission for people to make podfic for.

If anyone has any recommendations, that would be very helpful. (And self recommendations are more than welcome!)

[syndicated profile] reddittrackers_feed

Posted by /u/kingkooom

I’ve been building MyScreenList, a site for tracking TV shows, movies, and games in one place.

The idea is to combine a watchlist, game backlog, episode tracker, ratings, Discover page, trailers, and friends’ lists into one clean app.

For people who use Letterboxd, MAL, Backloggd, IMDb lists, etc. I would combining those into one tracker actually be useful, but I still have export tags on the website to imdb, letterbox, metacritic

I’m mainly looking for feedback the website as a whole

Iink is MyScreenList.com

submitted by /u/kingkooom
[link] [comments]

Jokes

Apr. 28th, 2026 12:12 am
pattrose: (REsident ALien2)
[personal profile] pattrose
Jokes

* Why did the snail paint a giant S on his car? So when he drove by, people could say: “Look at that S car go!”
* What subject do cats like best in school? Hiss-tory.
* Why can't you make a dinosaur omelet? Because they're egg-stinct.
* How many goats does it take to change a lightbulb? Just one, but you have to goat them into it.
* Did you hear about the new squirrel diet? It's just nuts.
* When does a hippo have a tusk? After some rhino-plasty.

Quotes

Apr. 28th, 2026 12:11 am
pattrose: (Grumpy Cat1)
[personal profile] pattrose
Quotes


1. Friends buy you food. Best friends eat your food.” – Unknown
2. “There is nothing better than a friend unless it is a friend with chocolate.” – Linda Grayson
3. “Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.” – Sicilian Proverb
4. “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
5. “Good friends don’t let you do stupid things… alone.” – Unknown

90 discussion questions

Apr. 28th, 2026 12:10 am
pattrose: (High Potential 1)
[personal profile] pattrose
90 discussion questions.

1. Describe something you do better than most people. What makes you uniquely good at it?

I think I'm a good cook, but I would never think I'm better than anyone else. Basically, anyone who can read a recipe can be a good cook. Just takes practice.


2. What is your daily routine like? How would you like to change it?

Routine??? What the hell is that? I guess I don't believe in them. 😂😂

Crunchy questions

Apr. 28th, 2026 12:08 am
pattrose: (Elsbeth1)
[personal profile] pattrose
Crunchy questions

Do you believe in ghosts? Reincarnation? Out Of Body Experiences? Do you think there are interesting scientific explanations for any or all?

I believe in ghosts. Just because I haven't seen any doesn't make them less real. For a long time I believed in reincarnation. I don't know if I still do.

April not quite 365 days

Apr. 28th, 2026 12:06 am
pattrose: (Brilliant Minds 2)
[personal profile] pattrose
April not quite 365 days

26.  Do you still have a landline, or do you only use your mobile phone/cellphone?

No, I only have a cell phone. I had one forever it seemed, but finally got rid of it.



27.  What sweets/candies do you remember from your childhood? When was the last time you ate some?

Chocolate-covered cherries. I don't even like the smell of them now. I must have been 25 when I ate some. Maybe I got sick off of them when I was young. I sure can't eat them now.



28.  In 2004, Shrek the sheep from Tarras, Central Otago, New Zealand, was finally shorn live on TV after 6 years of avoidance; the fleece weighed 27 kg (60 lb).  Do you own, or have you made anything from sheep’s wool?

No, never made anything from sheep wool. I don't own anything made out of wool.
[syndicated profile] torrentfreak_feed

Posted by Ernesto Van der Sar

hitmeIn 2021, a group of independent movie companies, including the makers of The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, London Has Fallen, and Rambo V, sued RCN Telecom Services at a New Jersey federal court.

The filmmakers alleged that RCN failed to disconnect repeat infringers on its network, making the ISP liable for its subscribers’ copyright infringement.

The lawsuit was one of several filed by the same group of filmmakers against U.S. Internet providers, including Grande Communications, Frontier Communications, and Verizon. These all alleged that the ISPs failed to terminate accounts of repeat infringers, which made the providers secondarily liable for these pirating subscribers.

Stipulation of Dismissal

A few days ago, the RCN case came to an end. In a joint stipulation filed on April 21, the movie companies agreed to dismiss the lawsuit. The dismissal is final, which means that the claims cannot be refiled, while each side covers its own costs and expenses.

“[A]ll parties to this matter […] hereby stipulate that this action is dismissed with prejudice pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(ii). Each party will bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees,” the filing reads.

Stipulation of dismissal

rcn dismiss

The legal paperwork does not reference a settlement agreement, nor is a reason mentioned. However, similar to the record label lawsuits against Verizon and Altice that were dropped last week, the Cox Supreme Court decision likely plays a role.

In all these cases, rightsholders argued that the ISPs’ knowledge of the infringing activity, combined with their failure to act, was sufficient to hold them liable for contributory copyright infringement. However, the new Supreme Court ruling narrowed this standard.

In Cox, the Supreme Court stated that contributory liability requires proof that the provider intended its service to be used for infringement. That intent can only be shown in one of two ways. Either the provider actively induced infringement, or the service is one that is tailored to piracy without substantial non-infringing uses.

Reddit Comments and Site Blocking

The RCN case was a substantial one. The filmmakers secured an early win in 2022 when Judge Georgette Castner denied RCN’s motion to dismiss, allowing the contributory and vicarious infringement claims to proceed. The case later expanded through amended complaints and a parallel lawsuit filed by Screen Media Ventures, which was dismissed in 2024.

To gather further evidence, the filmmakers also requested discovery subpoenas against Reddit at the Northern District of California, to unmask users who had posted piracy-related comments. Those efforts largely failed, with Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ruling that the Redditors’ First Amendment right to anonymous speech outweighed the filmmakers’ interest in the data.

In addition, the case was notable because the filmmakers sought a site-blocking injunction that would have required RCN to block access to The Pirate Bay, 1337x, YTS, RARBG, and other foreign pirate sites. That request was denied as a standalone cause of action, but it remained available as a potential remedy if the filmmakers won the case.

Further Cox Fallout

With this legal battle being dropped, these site-blocking requests will not be considered. However, the Cox ruling has increased the broader call of rightsholder representatives to implement site-blocking legislation in the United States.

There are currently several site-blocking bills in the works, and it is expected that U.S. Congress will seriously consider passing site-blocking legislation before the end of the current term.

Meanwhile, the Cox ruling continues to ripple through U.S. court dockets, with companies including Google and X Corp also arguing the ruling should benefit their pending cases.

A copy of the stipulation of dismissal with prejudice, filed at the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, is available here (pdf). The dismissal was signed by Judge Edward S. Kiel late last week.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

[syndicated profile] lifehacker_feed

Posted by Daniel Oropeza

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

With this live blog, you can keep up with the best deals the Lifehacker team finds every day—all in one place. Bookmark this page to keep an eye on what we're finding. As always, we use price-tracking tools to suss out the deals that are actually worth paying attention to, not just hype designed to instill a false sense of urgency.

American Meadows Order

Apr. 28th, 2026 12:38 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
My live plants arrived from American Meadows. \o/ 

Free Epic Poll

Apr. 27th, 2026 11:54 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
The April 7, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl has made its $200 goal, so you get a free epic. Everyone is eligible to vote in this poll. I will keep it open at least until Tuesday night. If there's a clear answer then, I'll close it; otherwise I may leave it open a little while longer. Here are your options...

"Better to Be an Outcast"
Summary: Shahana and Ari encounter a former paladin of Gorrein.
122 lines

"Filled with Things You Don't Know"
Story Date: Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Summary: Marjane works on library decor and gets a new assistant.
98 lines

Poll #34530 Free Epic for the April 7, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 3


Which of these should be the free epic?

View Answers

"Better to Be an Outcast"
1 (33.3%)

"Filled with Things You Don't Know"
2 (66.7%)

Book review: Cuckoo

Apr. 27th, 2026 09:47 pm
rocky41_7: (Default)
[personal profile] rocky41_7 posting in [community profile] fffriday

Alright, I know it's Monday, but I wrapped up yet another horror novel last night, Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Cuckoo. This book is about a group of kids in 1995 who are sent to a conversion camp, experience The Horrors, and then reunite many years later to have another crack at taking The Horrors down.

First, I have to say the decision to set a horror novel in a conversion camp is kind of galaxy-brained, because it is a place that by design is traumatizing and horrifying. This book will make your skin crawl and your eyes tear up well before the monster enters the scene. There are seven protagonists and they come from all walks of life—gay kids, trans kids, kids from Christian families, kids from Jewish families, white kids, Asian kids, Latino kids, fat kids, mentally ill kids—but they all come from families who were willing to stuff them, sobbing and kicking and begging, into the back of a van and ship them off with a bunch of strangers to be “cured.”

And then there’s the monsters.

Generally I’m not a fan of “body snatcher” kind of horror stories, in the same way I’m not a fan of conspiracy theory stories, but I think it largely works here, because this is what the families want isn’t it? For their problem child to go away for a while and come back a new person, without all those icky traits mom and dad didn’t want. For the teens, watching the queer kids around them succumb to “curing” would feel like a kind of body-snatching—who are you and what have you done with the queer person I knew?

The book is also very gross, and I mean that not pejoratively, but factually. If you have a low tolerance for grossness, this one may not be for you. The monster and its ilk are nasty galore (see minor complaint below) and Felker-Martin does not pull punches about the grossness of human existence, particularly as an angry, horny, repressed teenager in a desperate situation. The characters here puke, piss, make out in public bathrooms, masturbate amidst their sleeping peers, eat pussy during menstruation, and are generally grody in the way teenagers are grody. I think grounding the book in these bodily realities works well given the nature of the horror, which is incredibly personal and physical.

I liked the teens themselves and I felt like they represented a decent spread of attitudes and behaviors from people in circumstances both similar and diverse. They exhibit many of the kinds of irritating and off-putting behaviors you’d expect from a group of young people who’ve already learned they must hide their true selves or be punished for it.

There were a couple of things that didn’t totally land for me though. First, I think the descriptions of the monster(s) are overdone sometimes. Not because it grossed me out too much but because yes okay, we get it, the thing is nasty, it’s ugly, it smells bad, it’s inchoate; can we move on? Also, I never felt like I had a real idea of what the thing(s) looked like, despite all the descriptions.

Second, the book jacket description makes it sound like the majority of the book will be the teens as adults, returning to the horrors they faced when they were young, but two thirds or more of the book is the actual events of the conversion camp. It makes the final third in their adulthood feel somewhat rushed.

However, on the whole, I liked this book and I’d be open to reading more from Felker-Martin. There are so many moments here where you want to hug these kids and take them somewhere safe, and I enjoyed the book’s balance of the power of love with the grim reality of the cost of life.


Recent Reading: Cuckoo

Apr. 27th, 2026 09:46 pm
rocky41_7: (Default)
[personal profile] rocky41_7 posting in [community profile] books

Wrapped up yet another horror novel last night, Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Cuckoo. This book is about a group of kids in 1995 who are sent to a conversion camp, experience The Horrors, and then reunite many years later to have another crack at taking The Horrors down.

First, I have to say the decision to set a horror novel in a conversion camp is kind of galaxy-brained, because it is a place that by design is traumatizing and horrifying. This book will make your skin crawl and your eyes tear up well before the monster enters the scene. There are seven protagonists and they come from all walks of life—gay kids, trans kids, kids from Christian families, kids from Jewish families, white kids, Asian kids, Latino kids, fat kids, mentally ill kids—but they all come from families who were willing to stuff them, sobbing and kicking and begging, into the back of a van and ship them off with a bunch of strangers to be “cured.”

And then there’s the monsters.

Generally I’m not a fan of “body snatcher” kind of horror stories, in the same way I’m not a fan of conspiracy theory stories, but I think it largely works here, because this is what the families want isn’t it? For their problem child to go away for a while and come back a new person, without all those icky traits mom and dad didn’t want. For the teens, watching the queer kids around them succumb to “curing” would feel like a kind of body-snatching—who are you and what have you done with the queer person I knew?

The book is also very gross, and I mean that not pejoratively, but factually. If you have a low tolerance for grossness, this one may not be for you. The monster and its ilk are nasty galore (see minor complaint below) and Felker-Martin does not pull punches about the grossness of human existence, particularly as an angry, horny, repressed teenager in a desperate situation. The characters here puke, piss, make out in public bathrooms, masturbate amidst their sleeping peers, eat pussy during menstruation, and are generally grody in the way teenagers are grody. I think grounding the book in these bodily realities works well given the nature of the horror, which is incredibly personal and physical.

I liked the teens themselves and I felt like they represented a decent spread of attitudes and behaviors from people in circumstances both similar and diverse. They exhibit many of the kinds of irritating and off-putting behaviors you’d expect from a group of young people who’ve already learned they must hide their true selves or be punished for it.

There were a couple of things that didn’t totally land for me though. First, I think the descriptions of the monster(s) are overdone sometimes. Not because it grossed me out too much but because yes okay, we get it, the thing is nasty, it’s ugly, it smells bad, it’s inchoate; can we move on? Also, I never felt like I had a real idea of what the thing(s) looked like, despite all the descriptions.

Second, the book jacket description makes it sound like the majority of the book will be the teens as adults, returning to the horrors they faced when they were young, but two thirds or more of the book is the actual events of the conversion camp. It makes the final third in their adulthood feel somewhat rushed.

However, on the whole, I liked this book and I’d be open to reading more from Felker-Martin. There are so many moments here where you want to hug these kids and take them somewhere safe, and I enjoyed the book’s balance of the power of love with the grim reality of the cost of life.


Recent Reading: Cuckoo

Apr. 27th, 2026 09:45 pm
rocky41_7: (Default)
[personal profile] rocky41_7

Wrapped up yet another horror novel last night, Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Cuckoo. This book is about a group of kids in 1995 who are sent to a conversion camp, experience The Horrors, and then reunite many years later to have another crack at taking The Horrors down.

First, I have to say the decision to set a horror novel in a conversion camp is kind of galaxy-brained, because it is a place that by design is traumatizing and horrifying. This book will make your skin crawl and your eyes tear up well before the monster enters the scene. There are seven protagonists and they come from all walks of life—gay kids, trans kids, kids from Christian families, kids from Jewish families, white kids, Asian kids, Latino kids, fat kids, mentally ill kids—but they all come from families who were willing to stuff them, sobbing and kicking and begging, into the back of a van and ship them off with a bunch of strangers to be “cured.”

And then there’s the monsters.

Generally I’m not a fan of “body snatcher” kind of horror stories, in the same way I’m not a fan of conspiracy theory stories, but I think it largely works here, because this is what the families want isn’t it? For their problem child to go away for a while and come back a new person, without all those icky traits mom and dad didn’t want. For the teens, watching the queer kids around them succumb to “curing” would feel like a kind of body-snatching—who are you and what have you done with the queer person I knew?

The book is also very gross, and I mean that not pejoratively, but factually. If you have a low tolerance for grossness, this one may not be for you. The monster and its ilk are nasty galore (see minor complaint below) and Felker-Martin does not pull punches about the grossness of human existence, particularly as an angry, horny, repressed teenager in a desperate situation. The characters here puke, piss, make out in public bathrooms, masturbate amidst their sleeping peers, eat pussy during menstruation, and are generally grody in the way teenagers are grody. I think grounding the book in these bodily realities works well given the nature of the horror, which is incredibly personal and physical.

I liked the teens themselves and I felt like they represented a decent spread of attitudes and behaviors from people in circumstances both similar and diverse. They exhibit many of the kinds of irritating and off-putting behaviors you’d expect from a group of young people who’ve already learned they must hide their true selves or be punished for it.

There were a couple of things that didn’t totally land for me though. First, I think the descriptions of the monster(s) are overdone sometimes. Not because it grossed me out too much but because yes okay, we get it, the thing is nasty, it’s ugly, it smells bad, it’s inchoate; can we move on? Also, I never felt like I had a real idea of what the thing(s) looked like, despite all the descriptions.

Second, the book jacket description makes it sound like the majority of the book will be the teens as adults, returning to the horrors they faced when they were young, but two thirds or more of the book is the actual events of the conversion camp. It makes the final third in their adulthood feel somewhat rushed.

However, on the whole, I liked this book and I’d be open to reading more from Felker-Martin. There are so many moments here where you want to hug these kids and take them somewhere safe, and I enjoyed the book’s balance of the power of love with the grim reality of the cost of life.


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[personal profile] github posting in [site community profile] changelog

Branch: refs/heads/main Home: https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth Commit: 5b483b9dd7ee5b52211b7da808b7d2a5fec60d35 https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth/commit/5b483b9dd7ee5b52211b7da808b7d2a5fec60d35 Author: Mark Smith mark@dreamwidth.org Date: 2026-04-28 (Tue, 28 Apr 2026)

Changed paths: M cgi-bin/DW/Search.pm

Log Message:


DW::Search: drop mysql_enable_utf8 to match bytes-everywhere convention

Was causing Wide character in syswrite from Starman.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) noreply@anthropic.com

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General Fund Poll

Apr. 27th, 2026 11:24 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
The general fund currently contains $25. Everyone is eligible to vote in this poll. I will keep it open at least until Tuesday night. If there is a clear answer then, I'll close it. Otherwise I may leave it open at least a little longer. Here are your options...

"No Faster or Firmer Friendships" belongs to Polychrome Heroics and needs $45 to be complete. Josué makes friends with Maria-Vera. You could reveal a bunch of new verses here.

"The Doom Puff" is $15. You could sponsor that outright, and have $10 left for "No Faster or Firmer Friendships."

There are four epics from April: "Any Terms You Offer," "Eat It Happily Because It Is Good," "Edge of Enchantment," and "An Equally Valid Way of Being." This would make a good start on any one of those.


Poll #34529 General Fund Poll
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 2


How do you want to distribute the $25?

View Answers

$15 for "The Doom Puff" and $10 toward "No Faster or Firmer Friendships"
2 (100.0%)

ALL $25 into "No Faster or Firmer Friendships"
0 (0.0%)

Open a new epic
0 (0.0%)

ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
The following poems from the April 7, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl are currently available. Poems may be sponsored via PayPal -- there's a permanent donation button on my Dreamwidth profile page -- or you can write to me and discuss other methods. There are still verses left in the linkback poems "A Sense of Weather Changes," "The Loving Embrace of Night," "Generations of Cooks Past," "Homefree and Clear, " "One Bite at a Time," "Mishpocha," "Changing Your Nature," and "Besa."


"Any Terms You Offer"
Story Date: Monday, March 18, 2019
Summary: Barb feels confused by changes, but he's still standing up for himself.
125 lines, Buy It Now = $63

Gideon came home to find
a puddle of black fur
moping on his bed
.


"The Doom Puff"
Summary: What started out as a cute fluffy bunny didn't stay that way.
39 lines, Buy It Now = $15

"Eat It Happily Because It Is Good"
Story Date: Thursday, September 1, 2016
Summary: In which Shiv is a salad snob.
501 lines, Buy It Now = $251

Professor O'Keeffe had done a great job
of showing everyone around Memorial Park,
pointing out where the canna bulbs and
other tender perennials had already been
dug up to store over the winter or how
the rosebushes were dropping leaves
.


"Edge of Enchantment"
Story Date: Morning of Thursday, May 1, 2025
Summary: Digby and Maerwynn come to a trading post where they meet the first people in their new world.
357 lines, Buy It Now = $179

In the morning, Digby and Maerwynn
woke to song, but only half of that
came from the familiar birds
.


"An Equally Valid Way of Being"
Summary: Xavia finds that becoming a werewolf improves her mental as well as physical health.
66 lines, Buy It Now = $33

Xavia Brown had been
an indifferent college student
and an avid bicycler when
bad bicycle crash left her
with arm and leg impairment
on the left side, a lot of scars,
and chronic pain that made
every day into a struggle
.

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