kengr

Today is cloudy and cool.

I fed the birds. I put out a new suet cake. I've seen a huge flock of mostly sparrows.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 12/22/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 12/22/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 12/22/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

.

Current Mood: busy

marycatelli posting in

girlgenius_lair

Nah!

conuly

So, I'm reading something about an abusive relationship. So toxic, in every tiny respect. But the commenters! You've got a handful of them happily chirping things like "Oh, Abuser is trying so hard! He's really just controlling because he's worried, but look, he's trying to make Abusee happy!" and we've got another handful saying things like "I don't get why Abusee doesn't just leave. I mean, he's in public, is he scared of getting hit? In public? Like, geez."

Like... do you people know what sort of story you're even reading? Or, in the latter case, do you know anything about humans!?

Some people should not be allowed to comment on anything. WTF.

(Though, that having been said, the very first rule of running away and changing your name is never pick a fake name that has any connection to your real life. And because of this, our protagonist got kidnapped back by his abuser and his goon squad. Again. Well, the plot had to happen somehow, I guess, but still.)

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( Read more... )

spinnerette_feed

https://www.spinnyverse.com/comic/christmas-pablo

New comic!
Today's News:

https://www.spinnyverse.com/comic/christmas-pablo

grrlpowercomic_feed

Posted by DaveB

https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1419-inquisitor-vocare/

https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/?post_type=comic&p=8485

Sydney just has an inquisitive nature, is all. And she often thinks of obvious questions that no one has bothered asking, because they’re obvious, but sometimes thinks of advanced questions that no one has yet considered, but when she does that, it’s even odds that she’s skipping over intermediary understanding.

Sydney’s rough estimate of the station being “10 miles” from the “surface” of the star stem from her never having been 100,000 kilometers away from an object 12 million kilometers in diameter. The star “looked big” to her. Honestly, the scale of things in space would probably be very difficult to estimate to the untrained eyes. Heck, being in an environment without atmospheric haze would mess people up, and would also make for razor sharp shadows and the surface of that huge moon you’re standing on look like a bad special effect.

I’ve tried to picture what standing at the base of Olympus Mons would look like. Unlike most mountains on Earth, OM isn’t surrounded by other mountains. There’s no real “base” to Everest, just other mountain peaks smashed up against it. But OM more or less pops out of an endless plain, so you could stand at the base and look up to the top, which is ~3x as high as Everest. The other trick to visualizing it is to remember that Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, and no moisture, so there wouldn’t be any obscuring clouds, and atmospheric has would be vastly reduced. The other other trick, though, is to remember that OM has roughly the same footprint as Texas. You can’t stand at one end of Texas and see the middle, even assuming no atmospheric perspective, because the Earth curves away from you. The slope of OM does exceed the curvature of Mars’s surface, so while I think you could see the peak while standing at the base, I don’t think it would look as high as you might guess? I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure no one has ever taken a photograph from the base, and I also don’t think anyone has made an accurate 3D model of what it might look like.

Imagine a planet the size of Jupiter, only it’s a rocky world that a human could stand on without being crushed somehow. I don’t know, maybe it’s hollow. The Red Spot on Jupiter is larger than the Earth. If humanity had evolved on a planet like that, it’s conceivable that civilization wouldn’t have migrated, what, 4 or 5 times past that Red Spot size up until we invented airplanes, and that’s assuming somewhat favorable environments to explore, and that the Red Spot “Eden Zone” we evolved in wasn’t surrounded by 10,000 miles of desert on every side. It’s a scale that’s honestly really difficult to imagine. I think most people don’t even appreciate how large the Earth is.

Anyway, things in space are big and usually far away until you hop in a ship and then they’re not far away, and then people would be like, “I can’t tell how big that is. It could be a moon, it could be a space station. I need some sensor readings or at least one banana for scale.”

Kobold Sydney vote incentive! Is finally done!

So… you know, check it out. Oh, and as usual, Patreon has a scales only version.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.

https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1419-inquisitor-vocare/

https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/?post_type=comic&p=8485

the_daily_wtf_feed

Posted by Ellis Morning

https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-ghost-of-christmas-future

Many of us who fly for business and/or pleasure are all too aware of the myriad issues plaguing the 21st-century airline industry: everything from cybercrime targeting ailing IT systems and Boeing's ongoing nightmare to US commercial airline pilots being forced to retire at age 65, contributing to a diminishing workforce that has less of the sort of wisdom that can't be picked up in a flight simulator. The exact sort of experience you want your flight crew to have if, say, your aircraft loses an engine during takeoff.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. And our submitter Greta, reporting from the inside, shows us that even a win could be a dangerous loss waiting to happen:

This will be a departure in that it's about something that is soon to happen, rather than that which already was. Looming in the near distance is an event about which I'm trying my best not to give into apocalypse fetishism, but it's difficult not to.

We make aircraft. They're large, expensive flying robots. Our company is tiny. We're slowly growing, but could very comfortably fit in the 1966 General Motors New Look bus featured in Speed. We've produced, on a good year, up to three aircraft, with all design, programming, assembly and testing done in-house.

This quarter (and into next quarter), we're about to have a whole lot of the right kind of problem; our orders have approximately quintupled, and they're for a heavily revised version of the aircraft that is still partially theoretical. The designs are sort of done, we have some of the hardware that will be running our code, and some of the code is written and working. Some of it is written and non-working. Some of it is yet unwritten. The code carried forward from the previous version has been flown, but none of the new code has flown.

Our development team is facing a fascinating pile-up of pressures.

There is a contingent of fixed-term contracted interns who have been doing some heroic heavy lifting but whose contracts are up in a couple of weeks due to the college schedule; new blood will need to be trained and in the trenches to backfill them.

Some of our (custom) hardware has known design faults and needs modification and re-production, or is in the middle of production and we all hope and pray that no modification requests are needed.

We're doing our damnedest to write production-worthy code and tests as we go, and I would describe the design and review atmosphere as healthy, but bugs can happen and are happening: bugs of the category where, if they were released to an aircraft in the sky, the aircraft would become suddenly reacquainted with the ground. Some of those bugs can be fixed in firmware, and for some of them we need to ask our long-suffering electrical engineer to pretty please pull off a miracle with a soldering iron so that we can continue development before a new board is released.

Fully-functioning test hardware is scarce, and on a near daily basis developers need to have a polite conversation about who gets to perform a flash validation (I have not observed rock-paper-scissors yet).

We also simply don't have the bodies to physically build aircraft in the way we have in the past. Upper management has painted a picture for me where six weeks from now, the CEO, managers, all of my developers and me may be assembling and testing one or two hundred batteries by hand. (I have demanded pizza if this comes to pass.)

All of this in service of an early Spring deadline, with a parade of non-negotiable activities like careful flight testing before it.

Safety is paramount, and no corners will be cut. But picture where we are now: a frenzy of development, then the eye of the storm, the company holiday shutdown, where we all try our best to enjoy the time off without dwelling on what we're getting ourselves into in 2026.

I've always purposely avoided jobs where my screw-ups might produce serious injury or death. I have the utmost respect for those who assume this awesome responsibility and care about doing the best job possible. I feel for Greta and others like her, and I really hope that if or when push comes to shove, her company prioritizes safety over all else. We've already endured too many horrific examples of what happens when corners are cut in service of budget and time constraints that were never realistic to begin with.

[Advertisement] ProGet’s got you covered with security and access controls on your NuGet feeds. Learn more.

https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-ghost-of-christmas-future

ysabetwordsmith

These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Poem: "The Unicorn Door"
Poem: "The Coracle in the Forest"
Poem: "The Unknown Depths of Our Lives"
Climate Change
Birdfeeding
Climate Change
Today's Adventures
Poem: "Creativity, Ingenuity, Compassion, and Perseverance"
Space Exploration
Birdfeeding
Philosophical Questions: Economy
Poem: "The Community Couch"
Poetry Fishbowl Report for December 2, 2025
Poem: "Mamalokshen"
Unsold Poems for the December 2, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl
Crafts
Safety
Wildlife
Birdfeeding
Follow Friday 12-19-25: Languages and Linguistics
Dinosaurs
Moment of Silence: Gil Gerard
Birdfeeding
History
Birdfeeding
Today's Adventures
Three for the Memories Coming Back Next Month!
Early Humans
Hard Things

Food has 47 comments. Trauma has 46 comments. Affordable Housing has 78 comments. Robotics has 119 comments.

The 2025 Holiday Poetry Sale has closed, with a massive amount of material to post. It will take me a long time to get it all online, so please keep an eye on the sale page.

Winterfaire 2025 is still open!.List a Booth for anything you sell that would make good holiday gifts, or comment with what you're shopping for to crowdsource ideas. There are links to two similar shopping events online. if you know others, please pass the word.

"An Inkling of Things to Come" belongs to Polychrome: Shiv. It needs $72 to be complete. Shiv and his classmates discuss magical weather, magical geography, natural resources, plants and animals, history, and other aspects of worldbuilding.

The weather has been cold and snowy here. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a large mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a pair of cardinals, and two mourning doves.

Current Mood: busy

gunnerkrigg_feed

http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=3196

Try harder.

http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=3196

daily_illuminator_feed

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-12-22

For tabletop gamers in a mystery-type campaign, here's a simple and probably cheap way to add some tactile and visual pizzazz to your game: common locks.

If you've lived as long as I have, you've quite possibly acquired a drawer of various locking-type mechanisms over the years . . . hopefully with the appropriate keys or combinations. If so, you can hand out locks to represent in the physical world actual "locked" elements of the game. For example:

"The evil henchman's office has a door that would be impossible to blast open. It seems to need an elaborate passcode system." (The GM hands the players a lock secured around a piece of cardboard that says "Henchman's Office.")
"The computer system requires a password to enter. If you understand the security system correctly, you're pretty sure you only get two tries before it locks up the system entirely." (The GM hands over a closed lock labeled "Computer System.")

Later in the game, the players can acquire, say, a mysterious key or a lock combination. You know what that means . . . right?

There are a few "tricks" to making this work (in my mind). First, in most campaigns, the lock should not be a representation of the lock itself, because most household locks are ludicrously trivial to overcome – anyone who's spent time perusing Facebook has probably seen videos along the lines of "I'm going to open this lock using a piece of cheese and a toy dinosaur . . ." If you give the players (or the heroes) the opportunity to just brute-force their way into those locks, they probably will. Honestly, those type of barriers are best represented abstractly: "Make your Burglar! roll . . ."

Rather, this technique is best suited for gaming situations where there's no good way for the adventurers to get through the locking mechanism without finding an actual key or combination (or whatever the real-world key or combination represents in game).

It's also worth noting that just because the players have access to a lock at the gaming table (to serve as a tantalizing reminder), the heroes may not have access to the same lock. (If you use a corkboard or other method to represent locations, the physical locks might be placed on those areas as a reminder.) This can be especially tense if the players end up with, say, six mystery locks, all in different locations, and only one unlabeled key . . . Where do they go next?

As an alternative idea, for those serving bagels at the gaming table, you might consider lox.

– Steven Marsh

Warehouse 23 News: The City Never Sleeps Because Of All The Action

There are a million stories in the city, and they're all exciting! GURPS Action 9: The City shows how you can add GURPS City Stats to your GURPS Action campaigns. It also features six sample cities to use with your own action-packed adventures. Download it today from Warehouse 23!

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/a/2025-12-22

ysabetwordsmith

This poem was written outside the regular prompt calls. It was inspired by the "Twilight" square in my 11-1-25 card for the Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with

fuzzyred. It belongs to the series Coracle Shores and follows "The Coracle in the Forest."

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap251221.html

Can you tell that today is a solstice by the tilt of the Earth?

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap251221.html

ysabetwordsmith

Here are the content notes for "The Coracle in the Forest."

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

dumbingofage_feed

Posted by David M Willis

https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/02-im-the-problem-its-me/firstdate/

https://www.dumbingofage.com/?p=20875

https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/02-im-the-problem-its-me/firstdate/

https://www.dumbingofage.com/?p=20875

ysabetwordsmith

These are the character notes for "The Coracle in the Forest."

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

girlgenius_main_feed

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20251222

The Girl Genius comic for Monday, December 22, 2025 has been posted.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20251222

ysabetwordsmith

This poem came out of the November 4, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from

helgatwb. It also fills the "Journey" square in my 11-1-25 card for the Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with

fuzzyred. It begins the new series Coracle Shores. Its sequel is "The Unicorn Door."

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

kelkyag posting in

girlgenius_lair

YES WE SHALL!

egs_comic_feed

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/falsekings-084

New comic!
Today's News:

- KITTY! (from 2003)

- Staying with the Dunkels

I felt Jeremy absolutely had to be on-panel and properly acknowledged for his good kitty heroism before the end of part 4.

Unfortunately for Jeremy, the best way I could think to do that was, well, this.

One more page for part 4 before Christmas break, and I'm sure there won't be a single ominous thing it. I mean, an ominous page? On Christmas Eve? The very idea!

- Saturday EGSNP

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/falsekings-084