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may_25

sai 👍

another try at returning to my mother's arms (paint tool sai)
downloaded sai 2 this time around
the brush settings changed so i cant recreate all the decade-worth of dA brushes (and i looked a bit and it seems most sai2 brushes ppl post around are decorative ones, tho i haave to look deeper)
BUT! I really love the new watercolor brush, and of couse the stabilizer + texture layer modes are godtier like always
i also found out i like to use the default marker, pretty sure it's the same the kawiwi artists i liked when i was little used it too

honestly i think i might switch to it for awhile..! i think not having things like liquidify tool will help me improve, i rely too much on such tools
also i like how the font size is much bigger than most softwares, my vision isnt good so that's a plus

Entry tags:

learning,
ukulele

Wow! I feel really good about that!

I've been playing ukulele for years now, but never really felt like I knew how to play. But I just had an experience that really changed the way I feel about it. Back when The Talented Mr. Ripley first came out, I learned the words to "Tu Vuò Fa' L' Americano", and then I forgot about it for a long time. Today S. mentioned the song and I discovered I still remembered the words, so I pulled up the ukulele chords. To my surprise, I was able to play a passable version with literally five minutes!

S.W.A.T.: Fan Fiction: Sleepy Thoughts

Title: Sleepy Thoughts
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No Warnings Apply
Fandom: S.W.A.T.
Relationships: Donovan Rocker/Molly Hicks
Tags: Established Relationship, Fluff
Summary: They both loved naps, even when it turned to more.
Word Count: 2,905

( Sleepy Thoughts )

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The Fourth of the Recced Book Reviews: Get a Life, Chloe Brown

On May 8th, I offered to read the first five books people recced - assuming they were available (preferably from the library) - and I'd give a short review [https://bethbethbeth.dreamwidth.org/701769.html].

This is the fourth recced book review

Get a Life, Chloe Brown (2019) by Talia Hibbert (recced by lareinenoire on DW)

Let me start by saying that I have read many a romance novel in my day - thousands if I include fanfic, which I do - and lord knows I don't privilege fancy-pants literature over genre fiction.

However, for the first 50 or 60 pages, this romance novel wasn't doing much for me. The 2 main characters (a man & a woman) had started to feel as if they'd been created based on checklists of race, disability, class, etc., and their secretly-attracted-antagonists'-banter felt a little boilerplate.

Never say die, though. I soldiered on, and once Chloe & Red started actually interacting, both characters grew on me, and the book became much more engaging...and often charming.

For those of you who like super-tropey fiction (and fancy some decent sex scenes), you should give this a try.

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what are you playing wednesday

What Are You Playing (Thursday)

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“news with a beat”

By lunchtime I was thinking: it feels like I'm getting a migraine...and the massive sudden change in weather would back that up...but... I can't have a migraine! I just had one on Friday!

Yeah that's not how it works. I do feel like it's "not my turn yet," though. Hmph.

And yet here I am to tell you that my favorite musician is being threatened by the administrator of the country he and I are both from, for what Springsteen said in the city where I am now.

I refuse to read any more about this but D, who sent me this link, has been updating me since on it. The Boss keeps saying the government of his country is a threat to life and liberty every night on stage and Trump keeps insulting him on Truth Social: apparently now his skin is like a wrinkly prune.

Today D told me that Springsteen and the E Street Band have released an EP of what Bruce said and a few relevant songs from that first gig outside the U.S.

I listened to (most of) it while I was trying to work this afternoon. I'm just so delighted that it was in Manchester, which prides itself on being a city of rebellious and momentous music. (If only the gig had been at the Free Trade Hall instead of Coop Live! but it still makes me think of Bob Dylan and the Sex Pistols...)

I listened to the introduction, some of the lines I'd read about, and then the song and it struck me that "Land of Hope and Dreams" is a song about Clarence Clemons's death. It couldn't be as good a song as it without stemming from a profound lifelong love that Springsteen talks so movingly about in his autobiography and in Springsteen on Broadway, and that love existed between a Black man and a white man, about whom a Springsteen biographer said "They were these two guys who imagined that if they acted free, then other people would understand better that it was possible to be free."

And the song has taken on this whole new life, which I'm glad of even if I'd rather The Big Man got to live a longer life.

I listened to the intro for the other song, I was trying to eat my lunch and I ended up with my eyes closed, unable to do more than listen and breathe. And after talking for a few minutes, he quotes James Baldwin -- "There isn't as much humanity in the world as I'd like. But there's enough" -- and then says "Let's pray." And for some reason, the next track didn't start. And that was the end of that one. So I just sat there, over my bowl of leftovers, imagining this happening a few miles down the road and a few days ago, I felt like I was there.

But suspended in this weird silence that went on for a long time before I realized that something technological had gone wrong.

I read all about his Catholic childhood in his autobiography and recognized a lot of it myself, but neither of us have retained it. Silent prayer isn't his style. Going right in to the next song is. And that's what he did.

Did Zhao Liying Just Confirm Recent Dating Rumors with Director Midi Z?

Posted by Vic

https://dramapanda.com/2025/05/did-zhao-liying-confirm-dating-rumors-director-midi-z.html

https://dramapanda.com/?p=94915

Did Zhao Liying Just Confirm Recent Dating Rumors with Director Midi Z?

Chinese actress Zhao Liying has been repeatedly embroiled in dating rumors with Myanmar-born Taiwanese film director Midi Z whom she worked with in the movie The Unseen Sister. It drew a lot of attention as it would mark a new relationship for the 37-year-old actress following her divorce in 2021. On May 22, she seemingly addressed the rumors when she said that she’s riding on the hot search given by Weibo to announce that her drama What a Wonderful World will premiere soon.

In the past month, paparazzi claimed to have spotted Zhao Liying and Midi Z together multiple times. The director was reportedly also seen entering her residence with an access card and even spending time with her son. Meanwhile, Zhao Liying and her studio have neither confirmed nor denied the relationship.

However, her recent social media post including the hashtag about her first appearance since her dating news was interpreted by some as a move to make her relationship “official.” Then again, a closer look reveals no confirmation—only a savvy use of publicity to promote her new drama.

With the new hashtag #Does This Count as Zhao Liying Making Her Relationship Public# trending number one, Zhao Liying returned with another post to say, “As If.” She also revealed that What a Wonderful World will be announcing its premiere tomorrow.

Reactions were mixed. Some took it as her brushing off baseless rumors, while others feel it’s a confirmation. Whether or not the rumors are true, one thing is clear: it’s certainly drawing buzz.

The post Did Zhao Liying Just Confirm Recent Dating Rumors with Director Midi Z? appeared first on DramaPanda.

https://dramapanda.com/2025/05/did-zhao-liying-confirm-dating-rumors-director-midi-z.html

https://dramapanda.com/?p=94915

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sunderland

Joe's Pond

For once it was

durham_rambler who suggested that we take Tuesday afternoon off, and go out. What's more, he knew where he wanted to go: his social media had been showing him pictures of Joe's Pond, and the adjacent nature reserve at Rainton Meadows.

This is post-industrial landscape: the nature reserve was created by the restoration of the Rye Hill Opencast coal mine, and Joe's Pond is a former clay pit, now a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a very pleasant place to walk around on a sunny afternoon. There's a swan on her nest, and another preening by the path, who hissed at us as we passed. There were some coot, but they were camera-shy. The hawthorn was in bloom, and the yellow irises were just emerging.

And we called at a farm shop on our way home.

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Fic & Podfic: Condition Zebra [SGA, McKay/Sheppard, Teen, 8650 words & 1 hour]

Condition Zebra

A Pod/Fic Collaboration! Fic by Punk. Podfic, audiobook, and cover by mific.

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: Teen, for swears
Content notes: No standard notes apply.

Size: 8,650 words and 1 hour

Summary: John Sheppard, reaching new heights of not seeing it coming.

Punk's notes: In 2015, mific and I agreed that it'd be cool if I wrote a fic for her to podfic. I did, but then a lot of life happened and ten years passed before I was able to open it up again and edit it into shape with the help of panisdead. This story is much better because of her, and I'm so grateful for the time she put in across multiple betas. I'm also grateful for mific, who did a wonderful job with the podfic, as always, and that all three of us were still around to finish this project.

Title from my dad, who served on an aircraft carrier in the US Navy during the Vietnam War and told me about how "Set Condition Zebra throughout the ship" would come over the 1MC and all personnel would be expected to report to their assigned stations as quickly as practical to prepare the ship for combat.

In memory of ESS and SK.

mific's notes: When Punk reminded me about our plan to collaborate I was excited, and even more so after reading this excellent story. It's been enormous fun to podfic, both because the story itself is like the best of canon with added John and Rodney feels, and as Punk was open to features like sound effects. I've had a ball making the podfic and the cover art, and I hope you all love the story as much as I do.

Download or stream mific's podfic on AO3, where you can also read the fic, or stay put and read it here.

( Condition Zebra )

A/N: You can reblog this on Tumblr if you're feeling it, and if you want to know why Rodney was shouting about pigs, he was quoting Robert Heinlein: "Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig."

Email Punk | The Underground | Punk at AO3 | mific at AO3

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Feels Like the Old Days, redux: The Camaraderie is Key

Yesterday I blogged "Feels Like the Old Days" describing how spending several hours on Tuesday meeting f2f with a client then hanging out with my sales colleague for drinks and dinner felt like 'old times' again. On Wednesday I had another face-to-face meeting with a client, a different client, for which I met two colleagues who'd traveled in from out of town. But while that meeting had some similarities with Tuesday's in that people traveled to meet together, it was not the same.

What was missing? What was missing was the camaraderie.

Wednesday's meeting was transactional. My colleagues flew in for the meeting and flew out afterwards. We did chat outside the building both before and after the meeting, but those were a) short chats and b) focused almost entirely on the situation with the client. There was very little that was off the straight-and-narrow of the business immediately at hand.

And that's the difference. That's the difference between what working in enterprise sales was like in the "old days"— which, keep in mind, were as recent as 10-15 years ago— and today.

In the old days we spent time together as a team. We had unstructured hours together that we filled with everything from chat about work, to families, to life in general. We really got to know each other as people.

That's a big thing we've lost in the shift to working remotely. Today we just assemble a team to do a task, do the task, then go back to our separate jobs and lives. There's no camaraderie. And that camaraderie was the key.

The Friday Five for 23 May 2025

These questions were suggested by

thegreymouser.

1. What was the best gift you received?

2. What was the worst gift you received?

3. What gift did you wish for, but never got?

4. What was the best present you gave?

5. What was the worst present you gave?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning was a lot of fun! But a bit long, they could have cut a few scenes at the beginning of the movie.

I loved the butch in the submarine. Now that I'm back home, I've looked her up. She's called Kodiak and she's played by Katy O'Brian, who is a lesbian. <3

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: The Future Daybreak

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dreamwidth: community thursday

Community Thursday

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The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis (1945)

I picked up this book because I saw it mentioned as an example of the concept that "Hell is locked from the inside." That is, if God is the source of all good, then by separating yourself from God, your existence can have nothing good in it, and that's Hell. You can escape anytime by reconnecting with God.

Lewis explores this idea by imagining himself being taken on a journey from Hell (envisioned as a dreary, lonely, mostly-empty town in perpetual twilight) to the outskirts of Heaven. Here the "ghosts" of those in Hell are met by people they knew in life, who try to persuade them to enter Heaven instead of turning back. This is very much inspired by Dante, and like Dante, Lewis gets a guide: the Scottish fantasy author George MacDonald, who I'd never heard of, but apparently he was a great influence on Lewis. (Has anyone read his stuff?)

So, why would the dead turn back? Well, because it turns out the hard part of getting into Heaven is letting go of all the damaging patterns that made you miserable in life: Abusively controlling people and calling it love. Feeling big by making others feel small. Manipulating loved ones because you're scared they'll leave you. None of this has any place in Heaven, but most of the ghosts Lewis meets are so entrenched in it, blustering in pride or cowering in terror behind their emotional walls, that they'd rather go back to Hell than admit there's a better way.

Lewis keenly observes the lies people tell themselves to justify their own self-destructive behavior, and it's startling how little has changed in 80 years! Some of the ways these characters talk are chillingly familiar. Though I don't share the religious side of Lewis's worldview, we're certainly in close agreement in our understanding of how people lock themselves in their own personal hell on Earth.

The book is short but impactful. Lewis had a gift for viscerally expressing what his faith felt like to him, which is something I find valuable as someone who has never experienced religious faith. Part of why I read is to better understand what it's like in other people's heads, and this book did that for me.

(Oh, and I'm not being snarky by tagging this as fantasy. He calls it fantasy in the introduction! He makes it clear that he's writing imaginatively and not presuming to describe what the afterlife is actually like, because he can't know that. Well, I mean, I guess he knows now...)

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Big day yesterday

Yesterday was L.'s 21st birthday. And of course everyone else was wiped out by flares in their various illnesses. Fortunately, birthdays in our house are low-key affairs: The birthday person gets to choose where we order food from and what movie/show we watch, and then we have cake and ice cream. Yesterday that meant ordering delivery from Burger King and watching Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (which was extremely cheesy and entertaining).

Fortunately, L. has tried alcohol and decided she doesn't like it, so she wasn't missing out by not going out for her first legal drink yesterday, but I still wish her birthday could have been better.

Current Mood: sore
Current Location: Rat te Kāinga
Current Music: Cicadas

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Self propulsion is a crock

Muscles are annoying. I understand the biological method by which we develop our muscles after using them; they're still annoying when the delayed onset muscle soreness hits. Which it has, and now my hips and quads and hams are in misery.

I am working on pullups as well, and my deltoids hate me. That's fine, I can hate them back just as equally.

On the more cheerful side of working a body and being reasonably good at it, I have had several people ask me to teach them stretching so they don't do anything awkward to themselves during high impact activity.

Huang Yang Tiantian’s Father Under Investigation: Will the Scandal Affect New Drama Rebirth?

Posted by Vic

https://dramapanda.com/2025/05/huang-yang-tiantian-father-investigation-affect-rebirth.html

https://dramapanda.com/?p=94904

The online scrutiny surrounding Huang Yang Tiantian and her seemingly expensive earrings has taken a serious turn, as authorities opened an investigation into her father’s past conduct while serving as a civil servant in Ya’an, Sichuan Province. Although the teen actress claimed the earrings were borrowed from her mother—and her father later clarified they were fakes—many remained unconvinced and have been questioning their source of wealth.

An investigation was launched, and the progress was recently reported by Chinese news outlets. In response to the controversy, Ya’an authorities formed a joint task force composed of various departments to investigate Huang Yang Tiantian’s father, Mr. Yang, who worked in local offices between 2011 and 2017. The investigation stated he was not involved in post-earthquake reconstruction projects as alleged by many; however, the probe confirmed he is suspected of violating regulations by engaging in business ventures while holding public office and concealing a then illegal second child birth during his employment. The supervisory authority has filed a case for investigation into the suspected violations and will deal with them in accordance with the law.

With the case still under investigation, some were reminded of past scandals where lavish lifestyles of children exposed parental misconduct—such as Qu Wanting’s mother’s infamous corruption case. As public scrutiny continues, fans worry that the controversy could spill over into Huang Yang Tiantian’s career, potentially impacting Rebirth, her upcoming drama with Li Yunrui. Whatever the outcome, some argue her father’s issues should not affect the actress.

Source: 1

The post Huang Yang Tiantian’s Father Under Investigation: Will the Scandal Affect New Drama Rebirth? appeared first on DramaPanda.

https://dramapanda.com/2025/05/huang-yang-tiantian-father-investigation-affect-rebirth.html

https://dramapanda.com/?p=94904

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I'm a beach comber

( NSFW line art traditional mermaid face on - nudity )

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Oddments

I initially saw this because somebody on Facebook posted the video: Boyfriend proposed during the marathon she trained 6 months for, and in the list of Inappropriate Times and Places to Propose, while she is actually running a marathon is very near the top, right? it's bad enough for bloke to be waiting with ring and maybe flowers at the finish line (for many observers, marathon proposals are about men stealing the spotlight).

Run, girl, run.

***

To revert to that discussion about The Right Sort of Jawline and Breathing Properly the other day, TIL that mouth taping is (still) A Thing, and Canadian researchers say there’s no evidence that mouth taping has any health benefits and warn that it could actually be harmful for people with sleep apnea.

***

Since I see this is dated 2020, I may have posted it before: but hey, let's hear it for C18th women scholars of Anglo-Saxon Elizabeth Elstob, Old English scholar, and the Harleian Library. I think I want to know more about her years in the household of Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (1715–1785), duchess of Portland, who I know better through her connection with Mrs Delany of the botanically accurate embroidery and collages of flowers.

***

I like this report on the 'Discovery of Original Magna Carta' because it's actually attentive to the amount of actual work that goes into 'discovering', from the first, 'aha! that looks like it might be' to the final confirmation.

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!admin

Community Housekeeping

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