the_good_place | Member Posts

I read something that seems particularly relevant on Long Covid Awareness Day, a day which as an online pal who has LC says says,

We are combatting willful ignorance. People actively do not want to know about Long Covid, and the long-term health consequences of Covid infections. They do not want to see us.

The thing I read is about "AI" as currently understood, and grief. And I'm glad it connects both of these things to covid.

Generative AI emerged during a global pandemic -- a global trauma of mass death (1.2 million people in the US died of COVID, and about 7 million globally -- these are, no doubt, figures that undercount how many actually died of the disease, let alone those like my son who died during that time period of other causes -- overdoses, suicide, murder, and deaths related and unrelated to the pandemic).

Mass trauma, mass death and, as such, mass grieving. But it was, at the time and still to this day, a grief interrupted, a grief buried, a grief denied, a grief unobserved. We were often not able to bury our dead, not able to hold funerals, not able to have wakes, not able to observe the rituals of death, not able to gather, to bring food, to hold and comfort one another.

And when we were told the pandemic was over -- it hasn't really ended; the World Health Organization says there were around 150,000 cases of COVID reported in the last month -- we didn't deal with our trauma. We didn't deal with our grief. We were supposed to bury our feelings; we were supposed to forget. It was back-to-school, back to work, back to "normal."

There was, in fact, a massive demonstration of grief – an outpouring of grieving in public – during COVID; and that was the Black Lives Matter movement, the protests that occurred in cities throughout the country particularly after the murder of George Floyd. This grief was not private or hidden; it was collective. This grief was not just personal, expressed by those impacted directly by racism and police violence; it demanded from protestors and onlookers, empathy, solidarity. This grief was expressive – even as we are always told with protest, as with grief, that that is not the “good way” to say it. The grief of Floyd’s death – and all the deaths – was not sufficient. It was not simply a marker or memorial of death; but it was an act of life, an act of repair. It was a demonstration of love and loss and fury; it was a commitment to the future.

cosmolinguist

I had this tab open before, but I've only gotten around to reading it properly now that it seems to echo that emotional literacy thing.

It's the arousal-valence model.

By identifying your current level of arousal and valence, you can start to build awareness of your bodily sensations and the connection between those sensations and your emotions.

It looks like a good next step for me in "what to do next," like it's all well and good understanding that I'm bad at identifying and acknowledging my emotions, but now what can I do to make this less of a problem for me.

shadowkat

Hello, it's been a nice and quiet Saturday. Temperatures in the mid to high forties and low fifties. Jacket and sweatshirt weather. Wore sweats for most of the day. Niece sent me a University of Montana sweatshirt for my birthday. I had bought myself the HOKA training/walking shoes (although not from the link provided) rec'd by the PT. Which I wore yesterday and took a twenty minute walk around the block and to MetFresh today. (I know I should probably order groceries? But I find I buy less and I'm more frugal if I go to the grocery store - plus exercise, since I don't own or drive a car and walk everywhere, well outside of using the subway.)

Also clear blue sky with a scant trace of cloud cover. But alas no flowers or greenery anywhere, unlike I'd found, albeit briefly, in Battery Park earlier in the week. (Green grass, and one bush. Spring! I thought. But alas, no, still winter.) So, aching for flowers and greenery - I purchased more cut flowers from the grocery store. Red Roses, and a bunch of purple and reddish purple flowers that I do not know the names of - one's a purple globe, the others look like various versions of purple and red baby's breath. I'd buy an actual plant - but I have a dreadful black thumb and kill them. The green thumb skipped me and landed on my brother. I have a black thumb. I can kill a cactus. And fake plants - I associate with dust.

**

I did a few walks earlier in the week - when it was still warm outside, before we slid kicking and screaming back into winter. The first was up the pier to check out the cherry blossom festival (or the fake cherry blossom festival) on Pier 15. (It only it actually looked like that? It doesn't. Ah, the wonders of photo-shop and AI.) The second was around Battery City Park - the grass was actually green with flowers, purple flowers sprouting from a patch in the middle of it - helped no doubt by the fact that it was sealed off from people and dogs - and only geese, birds, insects and squirrels could frolic in the enclosure. People and dogs can do a lot of damage. Want to grow grass? Keep dogs and people away from it.

I also saw a green bush. And I thought - ah spring. Then it was in the thirties and forties the next day, and felt like 29 degrees, and I thought, no, still winter. Dang it.

The bush has green buds on it - but you have to enlarge the picture to see it. Also we now have an open pier that you can walk along to see the Statue of Liberty. When the Tall Boats Conference happens in July - that entire walkway should be open - so people can walk along and look at boats in the New York harbor.

The second walk was admittedly more productive than the first. I got stopped along the way by a Statue of Liberty Ticket Ferry scammer who was attempting to tell me that I was going the wrong way to the Statue of Liberty Ferry. I ignored him.

**

Mother interrupted this entry with a phone call - to regale me with news from my brother. I rarely talk to him myself - and honestly, don't need to, she tells me everything he's doing, his daughter is doing, and his wife doing - his friends are doing - and various and sundry family members whether I want this information or not. (Well in snatches, she doesn't remember half of it - and it's the stuff that I'm usually curious about that she doesn't remember, while the stuff I was happier not knowing - she does).
( discussions with mother )

***

Television

* Scarpetta This is the series starring Nicole Kidman, Jamie Lee Curtis, Simon Baker, and Bobbie Carnvale (along with his son) adapted from the Patricia Cornwall - Kay Scarpetta mysteries - which I read in the 1990s and early 00s, and now have only vague memories of. I honestly don't remember them at all, just the characters names, and vaguely their relationships with each other? I don't remember the FBI agent, or the sister, just the cop Marino and Kay. That means, I can be fairly open-minded about the series, and won't be comparing it to the books at all. And I didn't. I honestly can't remember much if anything at all about the books - and I read most of them.

Patricia Cornwall served as a consultant on the series, and it has a woman showrunner and director.

I want to like it? But there's something off about it? It's really kind of busy and noisy? I think I want to calm it down a little or cut some of it out? ( Read more... )

It's gotten mixed reviews? The professional critics seem to like it, but the audience really doesn't.

* Grantchester - this is on Netflix and PBS Passport. I like it better than Scarpetta. It's a historical mystery series featuring a young jazz loving Vicar who solves murder mysteries in his parish with a local homicide detective during the 1950s. The Vicar is a former solider who served in the WWII and is struggling to get past it.

* The Pitt - still enjoying this, although it seems a bit subdued from last year, not sure why. I think the characters are a little less on edge - or the characters that are on edge, aren't the principal characters so it's less apparent? Not sure. It's not a bad thing, just a tonal shift.

* Count of Monte Cristo - almost done. It's subdued as well, and very understated. I'm hesistant to rec too heavily? I'm enjoying it - because I kind of want understated and restrained and subdued at the moment. I'm appreciating it. I don't why. Maybe I'm tired of the noise that seems to surround me constantly? All the ads, all the marketing, all the noise...I want subdued?

This may explain why Scarpetta isn't working for me, but the Pitt, Grantchester, and Monte Cristo are? I'm apparently in the mood for a more realistic touch and a less frenetic high gloss one?

Off to bed.

erinptah

Finally got around to reading the What If…? book that has Moon Knight in it.

It’s good!

Age of MoonKnight over on Tumblr did a chapter-by-chapter liveblog, which I enjoyed. Check that out if you want a more beat-by-beat coverage of the plot (and lots of quotes). This is more of an overall post-game reflection.

Some short, spoiler-free reactions:

Based on the title, I expected “a canon-divergence AU where Marc meets Venom instead of Khonshu.” Instead, it starts in a universe that’s pretty close to 616, Khonshu and all. That gets crashed by an AU Marc who did get Venom’d…but it’s not a long-term divergence for him either, it basically happened that day. So, not the story I expected to see, but it’s good at being the story it wanted to tell
Jake and Steven get a very satisfying amount of page time. Haven’t counted, but I bet there’s a similar amount of chapters for all 4 POV characters (Local Marc, Import Steven, Import Jake, and Venom)
There are lots of fun deep-cut references to all kinds of random comics stuff. You can tell the author had a good time finding things to add in, and asking their MK-fan friends for suggestions
The author has good takes on Marlene! It’s one of their breakup eras, she helps out when the plot demands it and clearly still loves them, but she’s sticking to her boundaries and Marc is wistfully respectful about it
There’s an ongoing plot through all the What If…? books, which I mostly wasn’t interested in. Very authentic to the experience of “reading a Moon Knight tie-in with a Comics Event”

Longer, full-of-spoilers analysis and reaction follows.

( Two big things I look for in a Moon Knight installment are “making clear that Steven and Jake are just as valid/important/worthwhile as Marc” and “good takes on Marlene (or whoever else the love interest is)”. This nails it on both counts )

hannah

In the continuing adventures of revisiting grad school food, tonight's dinner was egg fried rice made from leftover congee and some stuff I had in the fridge and the freezer. I hadn't realized how much I'd been craving sodium and salt until I took a whiff of the soy sauce. I've been drinking tea and water, and even some electrolyte mixes, but nothing quite that satisfying. So the soy sauce helped considerably.

Most of the day's energy went towards returning some library books. Beyond that, it's slow, it's sluggish. Slugging along, even. Every so often, my ears clear for a few moments and the relief is blissful. There's a mix of not having much energy and not having much to do that's contributing to a sense of inertia, which I'm not sure I can be bothered to mind too much about at the moment.

Current Mood: indescribable
Current Music: Morning O - Tom Rosenthal

tinny

The latest round at

icontalking is all about making your icons look like comics. While I was at it, I made a few actual comic icons, from Dr Seuss, Calvin and Hobbes, and Asterix. I don't think these are much more than bases - two are actually just crops with no editing whatsoever - so I'm posting these only here to my journal and not to the actual round. Enjoy!

Teasers:

( 10 Asterix, 8 Wu Lei, 3 Calvin, 3 Dr Seuss, 1 CDrama )

I love comments, and if you have concrit for me, I'm open for that, too. All my icons are free to take and use, credit is appreciated. The list of makers whose textures and brushes I like to use is here in my resource post.

Previous icon posts:

cosmolinguist

Thanks everyone for the kind comments.

Surprisingly, I slept fine -- well, I was surprised anyway. I don't remember any of my dreams.

I am very amused that two of the smartest people I know (one of whom is a psychotherapist!) told me to play Tetris.

There are studies on this, often in particular groups of people who might acquire PTSD like healthcare workers or combat veterans.

I'm good at games like that and I love them. I have not literal Tetris but a similar simple colorful block-positioning game on my phone, which I play all the time anyway -- usually as something to keep me busy enough to be able to listen to a podcast or sometimes to watch something on TV, or sometimes to tire my eyes out enough to let me go to sleep.

But now I can tell myself it's medicinal!

I had a nice day: walking to and from angelofthenorth's this morning to help unload the van into her flat, enjoying the nice springlike weather for a change, and by the time I was home and showered it was almost time for said psychotherapist and her wife to visit, which is lovely as they are friends I rarely/never get to see, who were just nearby for the afternoon. I made dinner for us -- curry with sauce from a jar and added peppers and leftover chicken the others had last night. We're all pretty floppy, after those two had to take on tasks that were meant to be done yesterday by the two of us who were in Wales so much longer than we planned to be. But in a nice cozy way. No plans at all tomorrow, which I'm very much looking forward to.

neonvincent

I decided the Three Stooges throwing pies worked better in Pies in the face for the Razzie 'winners' on Pi Day.

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Dinomite Twins Twitch Stream

shadowkat

Sarah Michelle Gellar just reported on her Instagram site about four minutes ago that Hulu has unfortunately chosen not to move forward with Buffy: New Sunnydale but "if the apocalypse comes, you can still beep me".

"Announcement: Sarah Michelle Gellar shared in a recent video that the project was not proceeding on Instagram.

The Project: The revival was to be titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale, with Gellar returning alongside new cast members.

Development Issues: Prior to this, reports suggested that differences over the number of episodes (18 vs. 8) and a need to focus on a new cast were causing delay."

ETA for links, which weren't available until now - clearly people were waiting for Gellar to announce it before doing it themselves?

https://pagesix.com/2026/03/14/entertainment/buffy-series-revival-new-sunnydale-not-moving-forward-at-hulu-sarah-michelle-gellar-reveals/

https://deadline.com/2026/03/buffy-reboot-dead-sarah-michelle-gellar-hulu-chloe-zhao-1236753736/

( my two cents for what it's worth... )

In other news? There's rumors they may be reviving Firefly - with the entire cast on board - or it's just a reunion at a convention. That's actually more likely - since Firefly got cancelled too soon, and the cast and crew and writers wanted to continue with it, and were all on board and happy with each other.

fflo

hannah

The other day, I ripped a hole in the armpit of a Threadless t-shirt. This is only notable because I checked and I'd gotten that shirt almost 16 years ago. It's gotten some wear and tear over the years, especially in the seams for the sleeves, and I don't know if this specific rip is repairable or not. I don't want to throw it out - it's still a good "lounging around the apartment" shirt - but what I'm tempted to do is to buy a new one as close as I can get, and see how the materials are different. Aside from the nearly 16 years of wear and wash, that is.

They're having a sale, too. Inflation means it won't come out close to the same price, even taking that into account, but it'd make for a decent excuse. I've collected enough t-shirts since college that I can go at least two months without repeating one, easily. Three, if I decide to wear the ones I got as podcast promotions as part of the regular rotation instead of being "travel" shirts. It's not something where I've sat down and counted, or even sorted through. I've just collected and worn them. And, frankly, I don't see much reason to stop. As has been said, at least it beats heroin.

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Music: nothing now

cosmolinguist

The plan for today was to leave early, drive the four hours back to Manchester, and unload the van at angelofthenorth's flat.

I planned to be home by mid-afternoon. I was planning to make dinner, and I hoped to be back soon enough and with enough energy left over to walk Teddy at the usual kind of time, 4 or 5 in the afternoon.

We checked out of the hotel at 8, went for breakfast at the Starbucks in the Travelodge parking lot, and got on the road maybe half an hour later.

We'd just gotten out of town and on an A road/highway, I was just thinking about texting a quick "on our way!" for V and D to wake up to, but before I could fish my phone out of the pocket trapped by the seatbelt, ( details of car crash which sound scary so please be assured no one was injured! )

( And my pitch-black humor about the situation. )

The van was being driven by a friend of angelofthenorth's who has rented lots of vans, used to drive one for Argos, and was a very careful driver. He is a retired cop, so when we made it to a nearby lay-by/rest area, he called the rental company to report the accident, he described it very calmly and precisely, in slightly more technical terms than the lady on the other end was expecting. He said he hadn't been in an accident himself since 1990something, but all his skills were clearly intact from the many other incidents he'd called in like this.

The van wasn't badly damaged but wasn't safe to drive without the passenger side (he called it near side) mirror, and indicator/blinkers on that side too. (The mirror hadn't actually exploded, but all these things were hanging by the wires from the damaged housing.) So we had to call AA too, and wait for them to be able to send something big enough to haul a loaded Peugeot Boxer van.

The accident happened a couple minutes before 9am. After we were told "before 12.20," 11.40, 11.45 and 12.45, a nice man with a big yellow AA truck pulled ahead of us at 12.50, eliciting such cheers from the other two (who of course recognized it more quickly than I could) that I jumped a little.

We had to wait in the lay-by not far from where we'd set off, for a length of time that should've gotten us basically back to Manchester (minus stops to pee/get lunch/etc.). We were waiting there so long that angelofthenorth's blood sugar was a worry, but luckily it remained okay.

The AA man was efficient and kind, and it was a little bit exciting to get to ride in the back of his truck, which had such high steps that it reminded me of getting into tractors. He got us to the body shop he was told to take us to, we were told they would have arranged to swap our van for another one, but when we got there it was closed.

There was time pressure here too because we were also coming up on, and then quickly past, the time this poor guy was supposed to finish his shift, and his commitment to not abandoning us and our burdened van on a street somewhere in Swansea was coming up against not only the end of his shift and the beginning of his weekend, but the end of the time he'd be safe to drive -- he woke up at 4.30 this morning and I bet that seemed like a very long time ago as he was stuck with us while a surprisingly large number of telephone conversations were needed.

The looming fact that it was Friday suddenly loomed into relevance. The AA driver talked a lot about places closing early on a Friday, and already mid-afternoon I was seeing queues of traffic in Swansea as he drove us around. I hadn't expected we'd have to deal with Friday rush hour traffic of course!

Way too many frustrations, shenanigans and phone calls ensued. I'll spare you the grumbling and details but we by 2.45 we had the chance to use a toilet, by 3 we had access to a new van, by 3.30 we had swapped everything from the broken one to the new one (which while not ideal left me a little reassured by exactly what and how difficult it'd be to get it all into angelofthenorth's flat: before this, it'd been difficult for me to mentally separate what actually went in the van from the much greater amount of work I'd ended up doing in the sliding tile puzzle of moving things out of but then back into the storage containers).

Finally, we could set off.

It was 3.45.

Manchester was still four hours away.

I'd been hoping to be home by that point, showered, maybe had time for a little rest before I thought about walking Teddy.

At this point, the three of us determined that the best thing to do would be just to get home tonight, and unload the van early in the morning before it was due to be returned at noon.

It took longer than four hours, because we stopped for much-needed food in Abergavenny around 5, and maybe because this new van was limited to only going 60mph so we didn't benefit from the motorway/freeway driving as much as we might have.

I got home about 9.15pm, after an otherwise-uneventful trip back. angelofthenorth texted the group chat saying that a 9am start is planned for tomorrow morning, and then also saying "I feel like Erik should have a "please look after this goblin" sign round his neck."

I was very well looked after: helped to find food, to tidy stuff away that I literally just dropped when I opened the front door, hugged, and shooed off to a shower and bed.

I've never been so happy to be in my own house, hugged by my humans, and now in bed.

neonvincent

I didn't need this image in A great year for horror at the Oscars on Friday the 13th, but I like it just the same.

Current Mood: weird
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: wind in the trees

tinny

The current round at

retro_icontest was a list of 5 themes, and I picked two: the No Eyes theme, and the Inspo Icons theme, and made three icons for each:

1-3

4-6
Wu Lei x3 | Chen Minghao | Wu Lei | Nothing But You

the inspo icons for comparison

lazuli_reikou |

milkfed |

ieatstickers

I'm happy to receive all kind of comments, including concrit! All icons shareable. Credit for brushes and textures I use can be found here in my resource post.

Previous icon posts:

cahn

idek, I am continuing to fall so hard for the musical of Operation Mincemeat in a way that I sometimes do with theater-plus-music but haven't done for a while (I think the last time I got so fannish about something like this was Don Carlo(s) but for completely different reasons; hey, I can't really predict these things). There are clearly a lot of reasons (okay so yeah the whole hot-charismatic-women-in-suits thing is definitely still a thing), but one of them has to do with the tension between what is actually happening in the musical (a comedy/farce but with a lot of strong feelings bubbling under the surface) and what is happening on a meta level, as it's the kind of musical that cheerfully plays with semi-breaking the fourth wall whenever it feels like it, and the very nature of the way all five actors have to continually interlock and sing together in different combinations and switch from being in conflict to being in sync or vice versa gives a very strong meta vibe of teamwork/found-family.

Operation Mincemeat (Macintyre) -- so I read it! about the actual historical operation using a corpse with faked invasion plans to fool the Nazis, and it was very good and I don't feel like writing it up properly, so, here, instead, have a few totally random things that may or may not make sense:

- the part that I found most compelling was the bit about Baron Alexis von Roenne, whom I had never heard of before but who was Hitler's favorite intelligence analyst and who seems to have been quite intelligent and cautious, and also who wrote a report basically saying, "welp, so, these random invasion plans, found by our not-known-for-detail-or-for-incorruption guys, and which additionally haven't really been examined at all for, say, any kind of counter-espionage tells, contain information that is CLEARLY ALL TOTALLY TRUE." It turns out that he actually had become anti-Nazi and by 1943 "was deliberately passing information he knew to be false, directly to Hitler's desk," and although von Roenne (understandably) did not leave any actual documentation, Macintyre thinks it is very very possible that von Roenne did not believe a word of the Mincemeat faked papers... but... figured he might as well help out the British in their far-fetched plot. As far as I can tell from Macintyre, Hitler did not actually find out about the part where he was passing false information, but he was friends with the guy who tried to assassinate Hitler in July 1944, which unfortunately was enough reason for him to be executed horribly in October of that year. :(

- Macintyre mentioned that in the documentation, Glyndwr Michael, the man whose body lent itself to the Mincemeat deception of the "man who never was," ("Bill Martin") was considered a suicide by rat poison, but Macintyre postulated that it was just as possible that it was an accident, e.g. if Michael had gotten hungry enough to eat poison-laced bait. And I rather appreciate -- which I am sure is 100% intentional -- that the musical lyrics say "This homeless chap in Croydon / Accidentally ate rat poison."

- I found it absolutely hilarious that the musical scene switching between Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley partying and the seriousness of the submarine going to Spain to release the body is actually something Macintyre spells out! (They did not do a bar crawl as in the musical, but rather attended the theatre with the tickets used to flesh out Bill's cover story, with dates, one of which was Jean Leslie.) No wonder they wanted to make a musical of this!

Finding Hester (Edwards) -- I also read this, on the recommendation of

troisoiseaux and

nnozomi. This was just really sweet! And I super appreciated reading it after the Macintyre. It's a love letter to the power of internet fan groups who can Find Things Out -- here, they tracked down Hester Leggatt (who was first erroneously called Hester Leggett), the MI5 secretary who wrote Bill's love letters, and found out who she was and a lot of cool things about her life, including that she was not the embittered spinster that Macintyre portrays her as, nor the long-bereaved-fiancee that you might think from watching the musical, but someone who had a rich social life and a long-term lover (who was married, and it sounds like they may have eventually separated because he wouldn't divorce his wife). And who wrote a lot of letters! <3 It's a great counterpoint to Macintyre's book and a good reminder that people, in general, are more lovely and complicated and multi-faceted than they look, and than they might come across in a cursory first glance at their life.

I had to laugh at this bit near the end of the book:

The story of Operation Mincemeat seems to be cursed to carry with it inaccuracies and mistakes in books, articles, documentaries and any other form of media that features it. It even continues into media about the musical now, with articles continually getting things wrong regarding the writers, the actors or the show itself. Perhaps it is simply a matter of us now knowing far too much about the musical and having accidentally become Hester Leggatt experts, and the errors on these subjects specifically stick out to us. Maybe every book and article out there is wrong at least once, and we just don't have the knowledge to pick up on it.

I am here to tell you courtesy of salon, or at least

selenak and

mildred_of_midgard are here to tell you, that last sentence is true!

On the musical itself: I have been listening to the soundtrack somewhat nonstop in the car, and this means my poor A. has also been listening to it somewhat nonstop. He is not particularly a fan of the musical, but now he recognizes a lot of the lines... Anyway, so, this happened:

There's a song, "Making a Man," where the MI5 team is talking about constructing and describing the persona of the fictitious-man-behind-the-corpse who will be used in Operation Mincemeat. The first time it came on in the car when A. was there, he had his own thoughts on it:

Montagu: A mind that is stronger than iron
A: Alan Turing!
Montagu: That shines like a light in the dark
A: Yep!
Montagu: And a body that could wrestle a lion
A: ...never mind.

hannah

A dash of snow came down around two thirty and again around six. Not enough to stick around, but enough to notice it wasn't rain. It was one of the more exciting moments of a day brought low by a cold. The ENT doctor yesterday and two rapid tests this morning are decent enough confirmation I can accept that's all it is, which is as cold a comfort as I can get these days.

I can't remember when I bought them, but the tonics I got from the herb farm at the farmer's market seem to be doing a better job of calming my throat down than anything else I've tried. As that's all I want them for, I'll stick with what seems to be working. Anything for a good night's sleep. There's only so many pots of tea you can drink in a day.

Current Mood: groggy
Current Music: nothing now

shadowkat

Sigh. I had a story, the first paragraph, and now it's gone. It was in my head walking to the subway. And I thought I could grab it again...when I got on my computer tonight. But alas, it's gone. It'll come back again if need be. I may have to purchase the Tiles Survival Video Game to reprise it.

I learned a valuable lesson this week? When correcting someone or editing, be careful of tone. This is easier said than done? I am doing a lot of editing now - and it requires a lot of patience. Often I am correcting the same mistakes over and over and over again. And the mistakes from my perspective appear to be obvious? Like how can they not know this? And I often have to re-write my comments, and rewrite my emails multiple times, to ensure that my tone is okay.

On the internet it's remarkably easy to screw up with tone, resulting in miscommunications and fights and hurt feelings.

I've been corrected this week - by people who were careful with their tone, and by people who either don't understand tone or aren't careful. Precision in words doesn't always matter as much as how you choose to phrase them. After all, if your phrasing and tone is off - then your reader isn't understanding your words and they fall on death ears. Your intentions will be misunderstood.

I define tone by how I write the sentence. Not just the words that I chose, but the actual phrasing. I think of writing as a means of communicating thoughts, expression, emotion, facts, and information among other things (that I can't think of at the moment), and tone conveys the writers intent to the reader. Also emotion can affect tone - if you are writing from a place of frustration, irritation, impatience, or rage - it will be reflected in your tone. Because you aren't speaking orally - the emotion or intent often has to be conveyed through phrasing.

I've learned that tone in writing matters. So many miscommunications happen because of tone. I've lost count of the number of posts and comments that I've either walked away from or deleted because of the tone. Or the number of correspondents that I've parted ways with because of tone. When my tone is condescending or patronizing - I shut down the listener or reader - they stop hearing me. They stop reading. Instead of engaging their mind, I've engaged their emotions.

Writing carefully takes practice. It's an art. And it is hard to do on social media. I struggle with it. Some are better at it than others. It of course helps if you don't write in anger or frustration.

So many on the internet write carelessly, with little to no regard to the reader. You should care about the reader. We aren't posting our words to the abyss. And as a reader, you should care about the writer.

We should ask ourselves prior to responding directly to any post on the internet - whether it wise? Is it useful? Is it kind? Can we write our response in a way that the reader will respond favorably, and not get upset? Would we respond favorably to that response or comment or would we respond in anger? Do not post anything that makes you think you are clever or smarter or better than another. Or makes you feel superior to the person who posted? Leave your ego at the curb.

This is also hard to do in internet correspondence. I think sometimes it is really hard for people to hear each other? They are so caught up in their own heads they can't hear the other person?

I saw this great little bit on FB recently, where the commentator stated that "when someone is sharing their story with you - listen to it, without thinking about your own. Our tendency is to want to share our own similar story with the other person, as opposed to just hearing and responding to theirs. An example is - if I were to show you around my home or office, and your immediate response is - let me show you mine now."

I'm trying to get better at all of these things. But alas I am a work in progress as are we all. I'm also trying to forgive and be patient with those at work, on DW, in personal life, facebook, fandom, social media platforms, what have you - whose tone is often condescending and hurtful - and try to remember I don't know what their day was like? I don't know what they are feeling right now? Maybe a loved one died? Maybe work pissed them off? Maybe they want to lash out at the world?

It is hard sometimes, I think, to remember this? That in the end, we are all just doing time on planet earth the best that we are able. And sometimes we need to vent into the void without anyone kicking us for it?

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erinptah

Wrapping up volume 2 of Seven Seas’ new print edition of PSOH! Sometimes with comparisons to volume 3 of the original Tokyopop translation.

I’m posting the individual reactions on Mastodon and Bluesky, then rounding them up in the blog. Previous roundups in my PSOH fandom tag. You can pick up the books with my affiliate links here.

I made myself so hungry looking up the desserts named in this one, and I don’t think any of them are sold in my area. Boo.

( ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?! Were you waiting for him to sprinkle soy sauce on you?! )

cosmolinguist

I am sure there was toothpaste in my washkit the last time I traveled... But there is not now.

Apart from this and lack of snacks (why didn't I think to bring snacks, ha), I am doing alright. I slept decently last night, and slept a lot more this afternoon, once the van was as loaded as it was going to get.

I feel for angelofthenorth, who basically has the same level of difficulty extracting the things she wants from the two big storage containers that I would've had if Andrew had decanted all of our house into similar, since that's more or less what has happened here.

Everything has been a sliding-tile-puzzle of needing to move things to get to other things, and all the tiles are heavy, and you also have to think about whether they're packed in a structurally sound condition and whether they can get wet.

We have been remarkably successful at furniture, but also some things have just been too difficult to unearth, particularly in the worst weather possible for this: rain and heavy wind. She has dealt with it all very well, being very practical about what can be replaced via Manchester's charity shops or Ikea.

All of this is such an emotionally exhausting undertaking. I'm glad I can at least handle some of the physical burdens for her.