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men of steel

Suddenly, in Smallville...

My Smallville fics have been doing modest numbers over at AO3 for weeks now, due to, I can only assume, the new Superman movie. I've never had my old fics gain such sudden and sustained popularity because of a new installment to canon; in fact, this didn't happen with the previous Superman movies. Not that I was paying attention, but didn't Zach Snyder release like three of them? Or the same one three times? IDK you hear things.

Anyway, it's delightful that people are finding and enjoying my Smallville fics even if I have no idea how they're doing it. It's not like they're going to end up at the top of any filter sorted by engagement....or date.

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What We Do In The Shadows (2019-2024)

Last night I finished watching What We Do In The Shadows, and this morning I was sweeping up the kitty litter from the floor, just like I do every morning, and the kitten was there helping me by grabbing the broom, just like he does every morning, and as I raised the broom above his head, explaining that I was trying to sweep, I could hear Guillermo and that tired, flat voice he gets whenever he's trying to explain literally anything to the vampires.

Cats and vampires: Neither of them understands, or cares, what you're saying. And they hiss when they're angry.

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book report

Fly Trap, by Frances Hardinge

The continued adventures of runaway orphan Mosca Mye, her horrible goose, and Eponymous Clent, poet, thief, conman, and mentor.

This does a neat job of reminding the reader of the events and personages of the previous book, Fly By Night, while introducing a whole new city and its dark underworld. I enjoyed it even more than the first book. It's tense and inventive and the story doesn't let up for a second, with always something meaningful at stake.

Recommended! Though you'll probably want to read the first book first.

Contains: childbirth; incarceration; children in peril; rigidly enforced class system.

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listen to this

myNoise.net update

While I was away from my keyboard at the start of the year, Dr. Stéphane Pigeon was busy creating a bunch of new soundscapes! Here's a round up of all the new generators he's posted this year:

The Nyquist Frontier: An electronic music generator that sounds like it's coming straight to you from the 1980s. I felt like The Pet Shop Boys were about to start singing at any moment. Comes with a little history lesson about synthesizers.

Glacier Lagoon: Recorded in Iceland! Lots of different water noises here, including ice. Play around with the sliders to combine them. I like the "Fresh Water" presets with lapping waves and some of the underwater recordings (the four on the right) thrown in.

Flock Of Flutter: Well, this isn't what it sounds like at all. It's not birds, it's a Swiffer duster attached to a motor that causes it to brush against crumpled kraft paper, creating a warm white noise (though perhaps closer to what's called pink noise), similar to the steady hum of a fan.

Organic White: A white noise generator created from carefully selected recordings of wind and rain. Unlike synthetic white noise, which is unchanging, this has a bit more texture and variation to it.

Indigo Amanita: Dr. Pigeon's attempt at Goa Trance, which I'm unfamiliar with, but is, apparently, a genre of electronic dance music that originated in the early 1990s in the Indian state of Goa. It's upbeat.

Floating: From Dr. Pigeon's description: An ambient soundscape for deep relaxation, Floating avoids rhythm and melody, using slowly evolving textures and warm low-frequency tones to help the mind slow down by removing musical expectations.

Upstream: This soundscape traces the path of a waterfall back to its source, a small stream.

Uganda Tales: Recorded on the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda. I recommend trying the presets to experience the many different pairings of natural sounds, music, and human speech this soundscape offers.

Glacier Chorus: More from Iceland. This time it's underwater sounds recorded in a glacier lagoon. Dr. Pigeon writes, "At times, you might think you're hearing birds or sea creatures. But these sounds don't come from any animals. They all are the voice of the glacier itself. As the glacier melts, the ice cracks and groans under its own heavy weight and small rocks that were once frozen inside are freed and tumble down the ice. Underwater, tiny air bubbles that were trapped in the ice pop and fizz as they escape."

Gong Bath — ft. Reggie Hubbard: A meditation in vibrations, taken from a live recording during a public sound bath at Kripalu. Dr. Pigeon writes, "These are not sounds that say, 'everything is fine.' These are sounds that ask questions. That challenge your sense of ease. That's why gongs are so powerful in meditation: they don't lull you — they awaken you. They agitate the quiet — revealing what usually lies buried beneath." Which is a very generous way to say that this sounds like the soundtrack to a horror movie.

The Architect's Eclipse: Space ambient music. This one sounds like a more relaxed version of the soundtrack to the movie Cube.

Icelandic Shores: A sea, wind, and rain noise generator. Very similar vibes to that of the beloved Irish Coast Soundscape, only recorded in Iceland. This is for you if you like your beaches cold and windy.

Now we're all caught up!

If you want to keep up with the myNoise news, Dr. Pigeon has left corporate social media, but there are plenty of other ways to get updates. You can follow myNoise.net on Mastodon or wherever you access the Fediverse. You can subscribe to his mailing list that notifies you of new soundscapes. Or you can follow the myNoise RSS feed in your favorite RSS reader or here at Dreamwidth at

mynoise_feed.

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You Gotta Eat, by Margaret Eby

You Gotta Eat: Real-Life Strategies for Feeding Yourself When Cooking Feels Impossible, by Margaret Eby:

A gentle and funny book about how to feed yourself when that seems impossible.

This book offers three things: permission, inspiration, and recipes, in about those proportions if this were a list of ingredients. The chapters are arranged in increasing order of effort, from, basically, eating straight out of the fridge, right up to chopping stuff up and turning on the oven.

Each chapter starts with a theme and a bunch of ideas about how to turn things like eggs, greens, beans, noodles, dumplings, and canned foods into a meal, then finishes with one or two basic "do exactly this" recipes. The permission is throughout. Yes, it's okay to eat popcorn for dinner. Yes, a dip is a meal. Yes, you can just eat cheese with your hands. I gotta say, though, there is A LOT of cheese and dairy in this book. And, it's true, if I could eat dairy, a lot of my eating problems would be solved, but alas.

Still, I love the energy of the book and how funny and relentlessly kind Eby is. From the introduction:

When food felt like a chore, I kept reminding myself: the best food is the food that you'll eat. This is the mantra of this book. Michael Pollan famously had three rules for eating: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." That's nice for him! Here, we're gonna stop with the first one. And we're going to make it easy.

And there are a lot of easy ideas in here! Frittatas! Hummus! Smoothies! For when you're too tired to even chew!

This is more of a survival guide than a cookbook, though, as some of the cooking advice is a bit on the thin side, and if you're new to cooking, you might not know, for example, that you'll want to undercook pasta if you're putting it into a casserole, something Eby fails to mention. The book is probably best for someone who already knows the basics, but just can't imagine lifting a spoon or picking up a frying pan. Eby has a lot of suggestions for things to cook in the toaster oven and the microwave, and the most involved this book gets is casseroles and stirfrys. There are even two (2) quick desserts.

Recommended! Though if you have dietary restrictions, you'll have to do the extra work yourself to make this book work for you (just like every other day) and large sections of it might not, but I think it's still worth it for the inspiration and the reminder to go easy on yourself. You're doing the best you can.