firstfrost | Network

A throwback to the good old days... remember web rings? Kagi Small Web. (Use the Next Post button at upper left to advance to another blog.) For more information, Kagi explains in their blog post – Kagi Small Web. Wasting time in Small Web is sort of the opposite of doomscrolling.

Freakpages is “a community-curated directory of esoteric articles across the internet, primarily from Wikipedia.” Random, interesting stuff - a new selection every month.

The Good, Neutral and Evil of monitor setups. My setup is Neutral Good. (Thanks to Information is Beautiful.. Also: Most Beautiful News of the Year)

Wes Cook and the McDonald’s Mural – a Cabel Sasser story. (Disclaimer: I’m a fan of Portland’s Panic Inc., of which Cabel Sasser is a co-founder.)

CEO Said a Thing Journalism by Karl Bode. (via kottke.org) I have so many mental filters when I read the news that I hardly am aware of automatic shields I put up – filtering nonsense, lies, propaganda, stupidity, etc.

An oldie: The 10 most important life lessons to master in your 30s.

As a retired individual who is 70, I found this article reassuring: I asked 50 retired people what surprised them most about their 70s—the same 6 answers came up and not one of them was about health or money

After last year’s remodel of my home library, I read There Comes a Time in Every Reader’s Life When You Have to Move the Books, which reminded me of packing 50+ boxes of books in my library. I was happy to see so many old friends (books) during that packing and unpacking.

The Cadbury Chocolate Ad (YouTube) I love dark chocolate!

muccamukk

(I've basically peaced out on answering comments, apologies. I'll try to catch up on at least the fandom ones. I appreciate you all!)

denise posted the thread about LJ going Russia-locked (ETA: see comments for corrections) and/or selling off six weeks ago now, which feels like twenty years in Internet time, but is probably not that long in business time. Has anyone heard updates on what's happening with LJ since then? Is this like the x-number of times ff.net was definitely going offline?

Relatedly, is anyone in touch with the mods of

camp_toccoa,

skyearth85 and/or

skew_whiff? Sky used to be active on Discord, but I haven't seen her in ages. Has there been any talk of moving that comm to Dreamwidth?

I remember it was a bit of a voyage through broken links and broken dreams last time I looked at it, but there's still a bunch of fic that never moved to either AO3 or DW.

jjhunter

The seeds lying in their wombs of earth are turning now
preparing to kick out taproots through their coats
I rewatch the video of bluebird chicks cracking their own eggshells
Wondering at babies battering through barriers to birth themselves
Choosing again and again to leave every womb that once held them
Protected and confined

===

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

andrewducker

It's amazing that my mood depends so much on what my children remember to bring home from school.

(Yesterday, down two bus passes and a backpack, misery.
Today, all of their belongings, relief!)

princessofgeeks

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oursin

I was reading this (and the various other reports about pro-natalist pontificating and getting women - the right sort, obvs - to BREED): Reform by-election candidate calls for ‘young girls’ to be given ‘biological reality’ check:

Mr Goodwin – who is standing for Reform UK in the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election – argued: “We need to explain and educate to young children, the next generation, the severity of this crisis.
“We need to also explain to young girls and women the biological reality of this crisis. Many women in Britain are having children much too late in life, and they would prefer to have children much earlier on.”

And I was thinking, you know who would be spitting tacks and riding in with all her guns blazing on this -

- no other than Dr Marie Stopes, who was so not about woman as mere breeding vessels. And was a) the daughter of an older mother and b) an older mother herself by the time she actually progenated.

Okay, she had views of the day (particularly when it came to daughter-in-laws, sigh), but she was also very much about women's choice, women pursuing careers, women not spending their entire lives in child-bearing, fewer but healthier babies through contraception and spacing, etc etc etc.

In many ways, yes, she was a monster, but a monster I would happily reanimate from the waves off Portland Bill where her ashes were scattered and send after these guys.

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: impressed

madfilkentist posting in

girlgenius_lair

Klaus in the Dungeon Dimensions.

oursin

Happy birthday,

cathrowan,

franzeska,

samskeyti and

ursula!

leecetheartist

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mergatrude

Reading: January was the month of abandoned books. It's probably more reflective of my and my current state of mind than the fault of these authors, but getting my brain to engage has been a struggle.

It's February now, and I finally managed to get through This Is How We Lose the Time War by dint of listening to it on the bus. I feel that it could've benefited from two readers with more distinctively different voices, but other than that...it was a very chewy story, and I had to take a break afterwards so I could process it.

Now I'm trying to listen to To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers, but mostly my brain is too tired to do more than listen to soothing music.

Watching: Dude has been making me watch Rick & Morty from the 2nd season. Only watchable in small doses. /o\ We've also nabbed my sister's box set to watch the extended editions of Lord of the Rings, plus the fun documentaries and bonus material, and we both agree they make a hell of a lot more sense than the theatrical releases and now I completely understand the LotRPS phenomenon.

No gaming to speak of.

Crafting: I'm trying to finish the blue cabled sock yarn and I'm so close but I overdid it and borked my thigh. I'm looking into an e-spinner but they're pricey. I also (perhaps rashly) promised to knit a jumper (sweater) for my brother to replace his favourite (navy with a fair isle yoke). I've not really done much colourwork, but the sleeve cuff looks good. Sadly, I decided the size was wrong and am going to have to undo it all, unless just go back to the cuff and fudge the increases from there.

Other stuff: Work is shit. I'm looking into when I can afford to retire, but I still have a couple of kids to support.

The weather has been stupidly hot. We had a string of days that were in the 39C - 41C range, and then we finally got a smidge of rain. Not nearly enough, but it filled our rainwater tank at least.

lovelyangel

Butter Croissant and Vanilla Cornet from Oyatsupan
iPhone 13 mini photo

Leaving Costco, I realized I was not too far from Oyatsupan, so I took the short detour on the way home. Unfortunately, they were sold out of baguettes, but they had choco and vanilla cornets. And I could compensate for the lack of a nice bread loaf with a butter croissant. These are both treats – indulgences – which aren’t generally on my diet.

Oyatsupan is a little bit out of the way when running errands in Beaverton, and I rarely stop there to get goodies. I have two Oyatsupan gift cards, so today’s dietary indulgence didn’t cost me a cent. I guess today is the day of cheap (but yummy) indulgences.

lovelyangel

Costco Food Court
February 12, 2026
iPhone 13 mini photo

I needed to make a Costco run today to get a supplement I was running low on. Going to Costco for just one item was sort of a waste – but then I decided I could grab a cheap lunch.

It’s been more than 10 years – probably more like 15 – since I’ve eaten anything at the Costco Food Court. Back then, there were no ordering kiosks – and all soft drinks were provided by Pepsico. However, the beef hot dog and soft drink combo is still $1.50 as it was then – a loss leader, for sure. Someday, Costco may have to give up on this crowd pleaser. I thought I should take advantage of the cheap combo while it’s still around.

I had arrived at the Costco before 11:00 am, and it was a shade after 11:00 am when I went up to a kiosk and ordered the combo. The food court wasn’t yet busy, and service was super fast. There were plenty of open tables, and I camped out at one.

The foot-long all-beef hot dog extended past both ends of the good-sized bun. I didn’t think to photograph my lunch, but after lunch I realized it counted as an indulgence, so I regretted the lack of a photo. I took a picture after I’d finished eating.

After Lunch at Costco
iPhone 13 mini photo

Coca-Cola is my drink of choice – but I cap my intake at a maximum of 16 ounces a day – preferably 8 or 12 ounces. I put ice in the 20 oz cup and didn’t fill the cup to the top, so there was probably less than 16 ounces in the cup. Neither hot dogs nor Coca-Cola are healthy, so lunch was definitely an indulgence. A very, very cheap one. Who knows? It might be another 15 years before I return to the Costco Food Court.

oursin

"Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker:

London is being used as the backdrop for inaccurate viral videos that reach enormous audiences around the world by playing into the worst stereotypes about the capital.

This was an investigation into one man who was doing this thing:

Last summer, the man says, he found himself sitting in his car, analysing trends on TikTok. His day job was conducting viewings for an estate agency but he was trying to come up with an idea for a viral video account that could be run as a money-making side-hustle.
“I was thinking of unique videos I can do for people,” he says on the tape.
That’s when he had a brainwave: “Hate brings views.”
At that time protests outside asylum hotels were spreading across the country. The man says he noticed “far-right people” were among the most engaged on TikTok. They were easy to rile up: “They hate such videos of illegal migrants. I was like, why not?”
....
The TikToker appears to have no concept of the potential real-world impact of his uploads, instead considering everything in terms of view counts and pieces of content.

So he made fake videos about immigrants being housed in prime properties, to which he had access through his job.

He had originally found he could make money through posting videos on TikTok but 'TikTok immediately deleted his account because he was just stealing other people’s videos and reposting them'.

There seems to be just a total disconnect going on in the guy's mind (or he's just ethically vacuous) and generally he does not appear the sharpest blade in the drawer:

Despite fostering online hatred, the man recorded.... insists he doesn’t personally share the views expressed on his TikTok account. Instead, he suggests his fake anti-migrant house tour videos were just a way to game the algorithm, build an audience, and hopefully make money.

He's also

baffled. He can’t understand how London Centric traced his anonymous hate-filled London TikTok account back to his employer by geolocating the wheelie bins in his videos.
“I thought no one’s gonna notice that,” he says. “Why would someone?”

As if people aren't doing this sort of thing all the time.