Interesting Links for 22-10-2025

Oct. 22nd, 2025 12:00 pm

Wrong kind of leaves

Oct. 22nd, 2025 10:00 am
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

Latest in a series of silly non-ice-hockey injuries: I came off my bike yesterday evening on the cycle path through the woods between Madingley Road and Storey's Way. I braked suddenly to avoid an oncoming cyclist, the wheels went sideways on the damp leaf mulch, and I ended up on the ground. The other cyclist was able to stop safely, and made sure to check I was ok.

Nothing is broken on me or the bike, but some impressive scrapes to the elbow and knee I landed on. I went home via the co-op and a supply of comfort food, cleaned everything up, and ate the food.

It's all a bit tender this morning, and rather puts the random ice hockey bruises in the shade.

My thinking on transgender issues

Oct. 22nd, 2025 09:46 am
andrewducker: (overwhelming firepower)
[personal profile] andrewducker
Every so often I see some politician Gotcha'd with "Can women have penises?" - and the results have always either be flailing or in a very rare case (new Greens leader Zack Polanski) just saying "Yes", in a way which basically hands everything to the interviewer.

And I know that it's really hard to deal with an interviewer who is determined to make you look bad. But it bothers me occasionally that people don't try and explain "But here is my point of view, and where it comes from" - because while saying "Yes" might be very reassuring to people already on your side, it does nothing to persuade others who are just confused by/mildly hostile.

So here, in a simple set of 4 steps is my view.

1) Nobody is choosing to be transgender. It's a difference in brain development.
See here. This isn't new, it's the medical view, and has been for many years.

2) Forcing people to live in the gender that they don't identify as is incredibly destructive to their mental health.
This is also long well known. The vast majority of attempts to raise boys as girls and vice versa have appalling impacts on people. The poster-boy for this was David Reimer, who suffered a terrible accident as a baby which destroyed his penis (in the 60s), never knew he was born a boy, and was raised a girl (on the advice of a doctor who believes that gender was just cultural conditioning). And it made him *incredibly* unhappy - within weeks of his parents breaking the rules they'd been given and telling him (at age 13) that he had been born a boy he'd changed his name and presentation. Details here.

3) Most transgender people are not publicly out.
You might get the impression that trans people are all out activists. But the vast majority aren't. They don't want to be "The person who was born one way and is now another", they want to be the person that they are on the inside. So almost nobody they interact with on a daily basis knows that they are transgender. The ones where "Everyone knows about this transgender person" are the exception, most of them are not public about it. As a friend said "My identity is female and back when I transitioned the advice was to deal and vanish into the big bad women's world."

4) Therefore, as a society, we have a choice between either forcibly outing people whenever they want to use a toilet, get married, throw a ball, or otherwise interact with society, or letting them live in the gender that they are presenting*.

There you go. That's the humane, liberal approach to transgender people. And every time you get hooked into arguments about the definition of the word "woman", you get pulled away from those very simple things: Nobody asked to be born in a body that destroys their mental health. Most people don't want to be public about that having happened to them (because it stops them just living as the gender they are in their brains). So we can either be supportive or we can torture them.

*And that's the approach that the European Court of Human Rights took, in Goodwin vs The United Kingdom in 2001. They balanced the right of someone to not have to out themselves, against the the negative consequences thereof. And found that the proven negative consequences were basically nonexistent. Which is what then led to Labour being forced to pass the Gender Recognition Act. The rights coming from that, to live in the gender that you choose, are what is currently under attack.

(no subject)

Oct. 22nd, 2025 09:45 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] catdracoand [personal profile] gryphynshadow!
fennectik: Anime (Anime)
[personal profile] fennectik posting in [community profile] anime_manga
Dani Chambers who voices Becky Blackbell (One of my favorite characters in the series,) is taking time off voice acting for voice therapy as stated on a post she made on X:

"This isn't permanent but when my voice comes back I can pop back in," Chambers said. "I'm currently in voice therapy to work on getting back to my normal range. But for now, Becky (and other baby voices) will be voice matched."

The announcement came hours before Season 3 of Spy X Family premiered on Crunchyroll.

Meanwhile, Chambers will still be providing her vocal talents to other characters in the show. Alongside voicing Becky Blackbell in Spy x Family, Chambers has also been in the English dubs of Solo Leveling, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, and several video games, including Pokemon Masters and Genshin Impact. - gamesradar

You can read more about it here:

Link

E is 20 and one day now!

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:24 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
It's wrong and bad and wrong and I don't like it. She was little just yesterday! Now she is not little, and her sibling is even less little, and I just don't understand how that happened.

Happy birthday to her, I guess.
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
told me that one of them, the friendliest, died today. Poor baby. The person who was supposed to trap them hasn't been in touch, apparently, so I'll talk to some people.

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Soup Season

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:27 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

I have, today, made my first Soup of the autumn: carrot and leek and celery and a couple of potatoes for good measure (and I then added frozen peas to my portion, because I like them cold and not at all cooked and definitely not reheated repeatedly over the course of a week). Bread and cheese, fruit to follow. I didn't manage Monday Morning Soup Ritual this week, as you can tell from the fact that it's Tuesday, but. Soup.

Some other bits and pieces: I have reached the stage of Squash Week where I have more recipes I want to make than I have squash with which to make them (... and one spaghetti squash) (for which I have at least some open EatYourBooks tabs). I hit refresh in my Oxfam tab aaaaaand the sale has cycled around to 30% off 3+ books. I have a chilli order ready to go as soon as my new debit card arrives OR I get over myself and see whether the credit card is actually behaving. There is a batch of onions caramelising in the Instant Pot. The current pain book is abruptly unexpectedly absorbing -- it's much more Sociology Of Pain than I'd quite been expecting, but it's potentially building to making at least some of the argument I want to from a refreshingly different angle to everything else I've come across in my background reading so far, and in the meantime in spite of my frustrations with it it's prompting lots of Useful Thoughts.

And I am wearing my Seasonal Leggings (courtesy of Mardy Bum, findable primarily on Facebook, or Instagram for a bit of an idea) and my Extremely Enthusiastic Slippers, like so. Read more... )

Dear book character:

Oct. 19th, 2025 01:11 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
You apparently are flabbergasted that two of your students have asked you not to call CPS on one of them. "I would never do that! Why is that your first thought!"

Well, maybe it's their first thought because you have a moral and legal responsibility to inform the authorities if you know that children are being as badly neglected as your nephew and his sisters are? I mean, if you wanted to solve this without getting a social worker involved, you had four years in which to do that.

I'm just saying, that might be why both of them thought you'd do that. Because that was what you were supposed to do, and shame on you for instead choosing to do nothing for so long. You are not the hero of this story, no matter what the author seems to think.

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[syndicated profile] ilonaandrews_blog_feed

Posted by Moderator R

It’s always exciting when a new story finds its voice, and House Andrews are happy to announce that This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me – Maggie the Undying 1 will be brought to life by none other than Kristen Sieh!

Kristen is a very accomplished stage, television, and voice-over performer with many audio credits under her belt. She is known for her incredible range and emotional precision, which (no spoiler!) will come incredibly handy for Maggie and her modern-girl-meets-epic-world adventures.

We will, of course, try to bring you exclusive Horde treats like samples, behind-the-scenes moments and perhaps even interviews from the recording process.

The audiobook will release alongside the print and e-book formats on the 31st of March 2026 and can already be preordered from all major audiobook retailers including Audible, Google Play, Audiobook etc.



The post This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me Audio Announcement first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Amorous toads

Oct. 21st, 2025 03:42 pm
oursin: Photograph of Stella Gibbons, overwritten IM IN UR WOODSHED SEEING SOMETHIN NASTY (woodshed)
[personal profile] oursin

This was in one of my inboxes this am (ironically, Mme C-C-'s):

Nice to connect beyond work
Hi,
We’ve crossed paths around the office a few times, and I’ve been meaning to say hello. I recently joined a dating site and thought it might be easier to connect there outside of work.
If you’re open to it, here’s my profile: [redacted link]
You’ll need to sign up to view it.
No pressure at all—just an invitation to chat in a space that isn’t tied to corporate email.
Either way, wishing you a great week.
Best,
A colleague

How creepy is that? (sending it in to phishing reporting).

(Or maybe run it past Ask A Manager???)

***

Actually, it is a bit of an insult to bufo bufo to characterise anyone doing this sort of thing as a toad, no? Especially when the poor things are currently suffering a good deal in their quest for LUHRRVVV: can Britain’s toads be saved from traffic and terrible decline?

(No, they are not zipping around doing dangerous driving in fast cars, parp-parp, like Mr Toad.)

They are trying to get to suitable mating areas:

toads like large ponds. Their ability to stay out of water for longer than frogs, means they can travel further to reach them – sometimes hundreds of metres, Petrovan says. They tend to stick to their ancestral migration routes – it’s common for adult toads to return to their birth pond to mate.

This is why the toad crossed the road.

I think I have heretofore mentioned the people who help toads to do this thing: in fact it's a bit of a recurrent theme.... (going way back).

The Eye of Argon by Jim Theis

Oct. 21st, 2025 08:55 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The story that began the grand tradition of picking on a teenager's work.

The Eye of Argon by Jim Theis
lauradi7dw: (abolish ICE)
[personal profile] lauradi7dw
My maternal grandmother's birthday was October 14. She died 30 years ago and wasn't particularly famous, so no celebrations occurred this year. But I've had three dreams in the past week set in her house or the vicinity. As I was growing up, it was just my grandparents' house and my parents' house in woods, mostly, plus yards and my grandparents' gardens. * The bit that I remember from last week's dream was that Arthur and I were both living in her house (in separate bedrooms) and were arguing about how high to set the thermostat.
First dream last night: Arthur and I were throwing meat out into the woods but before the wild boars could get it, a bobcat showed up. This makes no sense in any context - we wouldn't have had meat to begin with, and while there were woods, there certainly were no wild boars or bobcats. The second dream had some members of Stray Kids in my grandmother's kitchen. That is at least as implausible as the wild animals. I don't think I need to notify Audrey and her family (who live in that house now, although the kitchen is nothing like my grandmother's) to watch out for global stars.

*after she died, my mother and her brother sold most of the land, and now it's a 20+ house development.

(no subject)

Oct. 21st, 2025 08:57 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] adore!

I have a bajillion tabs open....

Oct. 18th, 2025 12:50 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
and they're pretty much all fanfic right now? I've clearly been falling behind.

(Don't ask how long this has been the situation, just do not ask.)

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Cassandra by Louise Bogan

Oct. 17th, 2025 08:29 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
To me, one silly task is like another.
I bare the shambling tricks of lust and pride.
This flesh will never give a child its mother,
Song, like a wing, tears through my breast, my side,
And madness chooses out my voice again,
Again. I am the chosen no hand saves:
The shrieking heaven lifted over men,
Not the dumb earth, wherein they set their graves.


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