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Nora Roberts/JD Robb
Sep. 5th, 2025 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreads3/5. One of her standalone romantic suspense titles, this one about a woman whose life is wrecked and best friend murdered by an identity thief, so she goes back to her hometown and rebuilds. Classic Roberts – homemaking in the literal sense, rebuilding from the ruins, deep family connections, a romance that does not take top billing. I liked this one. The hero is actually interesting, which is not the case with many of hers, and the set dressing about the trade of bartending and hospitality in general is a welcome departure.
Framed in Death
3/5. A pretty standard procedural about an artist turning to murder to get famous or whatever. I was not feeling this one – too formula, but what do I expect after 60 something books of formula, honestly. But then this was my audiobook during 90+ minutes of extensive and painful dental work, to which I also brought my simmering case of PTSD from that time I woke out of anesthesia in the middle of eye surgery and that is triggered by having people with instruments right there in my face, which makes dental work, you know. Not great. Aaaanyway, this book basically held my hand for 90 minutes, so you know what, long live the formula.
Sidebar: I am utterly boggled by the system of legalized prostitution she has half-imagined here. Not the legalized part, with mandatory STD testing for licensure and all that. No, I’m boggled by a throwaway reference to a “street LC,” who basically bangs people for cash in alleys, getting ready to . . . apply to move up? … Wait. Apply to whom? There is a government licensing body that decides who is eligible for street solicitation versus . . . what exactly? Nora. I have so many questions. You have no answers.
Yesterday I beat the Capra demon
Sep. 5th, 2025 03:01 pmrydra_wong(Content note for animal harm in the form of killing horrifying skinless zombie dogs. Also one man's slow descent into existential despair.)
This is a notorious point where a not insignificant number of people ragequit and stop playing the game altogether.
Also as previously mentioned I struggle badly with tracking multiple inputs, I have the reaction speed of a slime mould, and my default combat state is "panicked and flustered."
It took me about 7 hours (spread across multiple days -- admittedly, most of this time was doing the boss run again and again and again and then dying within seconds of the fight starting) and I am very proud of myself.
(And right now I am dealing with a medical stressor -- hopefully nothing, but had to go get some tests, waiting on results -- so I will take my distractions and wins where I can get them.)
Going back to work
Sep. 2nd, 2025 05:09 pmresonantI've been out of work since I was laid off in July 2024. It would have been really inconvenient to be working for a lot of that time, as I was helping my brother see our mother through her decline and death from dementia and also having some serious health issues of my own. (And Mom left me some money, which allowed me to say "I'm too stressed to job-hunt" and then not job-hunt, a rare luxury that I'm very grateful for.)
But I have to admit I've also been bored and restless and lonely. It will be nice to have co-workers, and tasks, and a paycheck again.
On the other hand, it's been thirteen months since I consistently had to be any place in particular in the morning. And the cat is going to be sad.
also we didn't get enough sun or warmth but it's autumn
Sep. 1st, 2025 05:52 pmcimoreneWax feels much worse than me, but it would not be fair to say I've recovered from it. I have enough energy to want to accomplish a project or go for a walk but not enough to start these things on my own (it takes about 1/2 as many spoons to do them together) and enough to want to see my friends but not enough to go beyond texting one of them once a month or so.
Anyway, Wax thinks she might have a thyroid issue. Or another physical issue, but the point is, she suspects she's not just depressed or burnt out. But her employer switched healthcare providers six months ago and the new one doesn't have a local branch, so going to an appointment will mean going into Turku (25-35 min drive). Her exhaustion is therefore holding her back from seeking treatment for it.
And I guess I also feel kinda bad. I am going to have to try to meet a new GP and discuss my medications and stuff. Sometimes, though, I think what I need (not instead of medication, just like... need most) is really a rigidly-scheduled regimen of eating enough calories and sleeping and exercising to gradually increase endurance at the same time every day, but as an ADHD sufferer, I can no more make myself do those than make myself suddenly speak Finnish fluently. It feels like there should be a trick - like it shouldn't be this hard to just create routines. Or leave the house alone to go for a walk. And yet.
Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera
Sep. 1st, 2025 10:23 amlightreads3/5. Chandrasekera’s first book made a splash, but this one really didn’t. I didn’t know why until I read it, and now I’m pretty sure it’s because no one wants to talk about it and demonstrate that they have no freaking clue what it’s about.
I’m . . . sort of . . . kidding. This is a strange passage of a book. It is ostensibly about two people who are instantiated across many lives over huge spans of time, and how they relate to each other, and how they don’t. It’s also about colonialism and modes of resistance and a sort of cosmic war. Probably?
Mostly, it’s a beautifully written piece with extremely clever intertextual stylings that is disorienting (on purpose, but I suspect he thought he was being much clearer than I think he is) and that does the reader only a few very basic favors in trying to figure out what is what. Or who is who, from chapter to chapter. Read if you like that sort of experience of disorienting fragments stitched together into something that, for me, did not resolve much at all.
Content notes: Many kinds of interpersonal and terroristic violence.
Code deploy happening shortly
Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
mark posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenancePer the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.
There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.
Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts
Aug. 31st, 2025 12:28 pmdenise posting in dw_newsA reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.
The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.
In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.
The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.
Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.
Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.
Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi
Aug. 31st, 2025 12:50 pmlightreads3/5. A novella in a series about a world where people who are murdered come back to life 999 times out of 1,000, except natural deaths still stick. I was hiding from my library book (shut up, it happens) and let Audible give this to me for free.
I read the second novella first by accident, and had a decent time. It’s one of those stories that I’m never going to really love because it is built around thinking through the implications of a single premise and how that would change society, but there’s no attempt to actually explain anything, and that’s probably for the best because there is no explanation that would be interesting or satisfying. The implications are mildly interesting, though – how do you murder someone under these constraints, for one? So, entertaining enough, but meh.
Then I realized I read the second one first and tried to read the first one and no, please, stop. The tortured infodumping is just so bad, I cannot. Apparently ‘second in a series, we assume you already know how this works’ is the degree of explanation I want for this sort of shallow construct.
Also, Zachary Quinto narrates these (Audible Originals, they do that sort of thing) and he’s . . . aggressively okay at it. Aggressively okay is kind of the whole vibe.
… so I’m playing Dark Souls
Aug. 29th, 2025 05:53 pmrydra_wongMy standard joke here is that any game involving reflexes and coordination is going to be an excruciating experience of innumerable repeated failures for me, so I might as well play one where that's the point. This is only partly a joke.
Necessary context for anyone who has not met me IRL: I am dyspraxic as fuck. I was in my late twenties at least, possibly thirties, before I could catch an object being gently thrown to me across a short distance. My coordination, reflexes and ability to react to multiple inputs in real-time are so bad that I can't drive (or cycle on the road) because it would be OBVIOUSLY WILDLY DANGEROUS for me to even try (people would die). I have to buy special shatterproof crockery because otherwise my plate turnover is so high.
It was only with climbing that I learned that I can actually acquire motor skills, some of them, slowly, if I have unlimited time to practice them on my own terms.
Further necessary context: I'd been looking wistfully at the Soulsbornes for ages -- having seen videos such as Jonny Sims's Bloodborne streams -- as something that I'd probably love if I only had any coordination or ability at all to cope with having to react to multiple rapid inputs in real-time.
One of my climber friends has argued that Soulslike games are basically the same as working on a hard boulder project: you fail and fail and fail and fail and that's the process, each time you try to learn a bit more or try something new, and gradually you make progress, and eventually, hopefully, you don't fail.
And that's a process that I fucking love, and that works very well for my brain. Perverse stubbornness is my jam.
But when I look at something like Bloodborne -- the combat exchange is over before I can even track who's where and what's happened.
So I was thinking grumpily/wistfully and in secret about how what I really wanted was not an "easy mode," but a Soulsborne game that I could adjust the speed on (maybe set it all to 20-30% slower!), just so I could get my foot in the door, just so I could begin to maybe try.
And I watched more videos of other games, and somewhere along the way I watched people figuring out and/or being coached on how to get through the fight with the Asylum Demon at the end of the tutorial* in Dark Souls 1.
(I also read that Dark Souls 1 has the slowest and, in some people's eyes, "clunkiest" combat of the Souls games — not necessarily the easiest, but more tactical, less fast-twitch.)
And I thought, "... huh, I wonder, if I really worked at it, maybe I could beat the Asylum Demon? That would be kind of cool."
To be clear: I bought the game with the goal of seeing if I could beat the tutorial.
( Cut for length )