kafj | Reading

Have achieved More Event Prep: both the arrows catalogue updating (albeit not printing), and Folding All The Potions ~~that printed successfully~~.
Friend is watching Orphan Black for the first time. I am getting Yelling. It's DELIGHTFUL.
Yesterday, leaving the lower limbs class that has been prescribed in an attempt to reduce the risk of reinjuring my ankle again, I... turned my ankle. (This is not the good bit.) In more or less the same way I did in April, that was the motivation for the current round of physio, but whether it was the exercises having actually helped anything at all or the fact that I was wearing different (and more supportive) boots or just pure luck, while it's a bit sore it is not e.g. refusing to bear weight any time I don't pay adequately close attention to how I load it, so I'm counting that one as a win.
We forgot New Elephant Day on Monday (Sheldrick Wildlife Trust calendar) so instead had New Elephant Day today... AND IT AN ADORABLE BABY RHINO. 13/10, etc.
I am nearly at the point where I think I might be able to read the Wikipedia page on action potentials and derive meaning from it? I'm definitely slightly less confused about the cell biologist's definition of depolarization than I was even yesterday...

multiple colours of sliced tomatoes, prominently featuring some blue-black with red stars

(By "today's" I mean not "all of those harvested today, nor even yesterday" but rather "the tomato course with dinner".)

I really love the ridiculous stars on the tops of the Blue Fire.

umadoshi

When it took forever to fall asleep last night, my brain's hamster wheel of choice was all household things--puttering and cleaning products and other such exciting stuff. I'm feeling fidgety and restless about home-related things, and I choose to blame the arrival of meteorological autumn (which TBH I usually forget is a thing, even though those seasonal dates are easier to pin down than the solstices and equinoxes). We often sort of melt into autumn here, but this year everything's taken a beating from lack of rain, so I've read several people talking about some leaves already coming down. :/

This morning I did manage to do some small puttery things that needed doing, but most things require input from both of us and

scruloose's mind and energy are currently elsewhere (long-overdue reno project). Also, y'know, I have a rewrite due in less than two weeks that I'm having real trouble focusing on; both that and the general restlessness are presumably not being helped by inevitable mild worry about Jinksy having dental extractions (also long-overdue) tomorrow.

(I'm reminding myself that any surfaces we can declutter before the fall crunch starts at Dayjob will be a significant help for my brain while that's going on. Here's hoping we can manage some of that.)

I won't think it's properly autumn until equinox anyway, but I do think maybe I'm ready for it.

Current Mood: restless

umadoshi

I don't usually have too much trouble falling asleep these years (thanks mainly to a low dose of amitriptyline), although it's never as easy as it seems like it should be, going by frequent evening sleepiness. (No, I still have not sent feelers out about restarting attempts at trying CPAP. >.< I think I'm a bit resistant because as long as I don't try it, there's the hope that it'll help when I do, but what if I do and it doesn't? *sighs*) But last night involved lying awake for well over two hours because my brain would not stop. Ugh.

Firm reminder to self: that used to be the norm. And at least there's no Dayjob today.

We didn't go to the wee local market this weekend, because when we were out with a car on Friday we were able to stop by the stall for a produce place ("place") I love, even though this was only our second time there. It's produce from a variety of farms down in the Valley, and they usually have a lot of different things, but for us it's not super feasible to get to without driving, even though it's not that far.

We came home with a pint of blueberries and three quarts of peaches, encompassing four peach varieties! ( cut in case you DGAF about peaches )

Back when we lived in Toronto (over twenty years ago now--what even?), of course, we had access to Ontario peaches, which are a glory upon the earth. And because my exposure to popular music (or, y'know, an awful lot of music generally) was even worse then than it is now, a couple decades later, I didn't actually know the "millions of peaches" song other than the "millions of peaches, peaches for me; millions of peaches, peaches for free" bit. Like. At all. But I would go around singing that bit in sheer joy over peaches, and sometimes about other things that I loved. No context.

(The classic example of that last bit is the time or three I was singing about "millions of Quake-chans", because a] the original Quake is one of my lifetime favorite games {am I still ridiculously annoyed both that the name/"franchise" has had absolutely nothing to do with the original game beyond the fucking game engine AND how bad Quake II was? Yes} and b] I had mostly left behind my early-anime-fangirl habit of using fragments of Japanese, but was still blithely appending "-chan" now and then for fun.)

Anyway, the point of this ramble is that (if I'm remembering correctly at this distance) one time Em was visiting and I merrily sang out "millions of kittens" etc. (this was before

scruloose and I were married, but we were already in it for the long haul, and at this point I had zero reason to think I would ever be able to have cats again because of their allergies), and when I finished the scrap of the song I knew and stopped, she quite reasonably belted out "KITTENS COME! IN A CAN!", which I had no way of predicting, and I probably didn't literally hit the floor in horror, but it came close.

Then she and

scruloose had to explain WTF had just happened and talk me down a bit, I think. ^^;

Current Music: KITTENS COME! IN A CAN!

silveradept

Because the state of Mississippi has no idea what protecting children online actually entails, and are instead hoping that queer content will simply disappear off the Internet so they don't have to see it, but are threatening fines of $10,000 USD for each time a minor accesses something the state considers age-restricted, which goes far beyond the official and still-in-force Miller test for obscenity, Dreamwidth will be temporarily unavailable in the State of Mississippi starting September 1, 2025, and lasting until the State of Mississippi is injuncted against enforcing their overbroad and unsafe law. Because the state requires not only age verification of minors, but permission slips obtained and then all of that identifying information and documentation to be retained, along with special flags set for minor accounts that will make it obvious to a casual profile viewer that they're looking at a minor account (and therefore a possibly very juicy target), Bluesky has decided they are blocking Mississippi from using their service until Mississippi can be told that their law is overbroad, unconstitutional, and does the opposite of what they want it to do. The reason that this is happening in the first place is because despite at least one Justice saying outright that the challenge to the law was likely to succeed on the merits, the Supereme Court of the United States allowed it to go into effect because the conservative majority (or Justice I-Like-Beer-and-Boobies himself) said that the plaintiffs hadn't demonstrated sufficiently that they would be hurt by the law. Which sounds much more like an encouragement to Mississippi and others to pass these laws, even if they are eventually shut down, than someone taking into account the likelihood that the law will be judged unconstitutional and permitting preliminary injunctions to stay in effect while the case is argued, so that the state doesn't get the opportunity to try and collect its fines.

( Federation, Professional Experience, and What Can Be Done )

It also turns out that Tennessee passed a similar, if less draconian, law, and therefore Tennesseans under 18 will be temporarily barred from registering accounts on Dreamwidth until their law can be thrown out, because, in a similar way, people decided that while the law was likely to be axed, somehow there wasn't sufficient showing of injury to injunct the law immediately, so instead it gets to cause damage until rendered moot. So this particular conflict has to be fought on multiple fronts, in places passing laws and in places trying to pass them. Having seen the damage that happens when those places are allowed to pass laws, if your locality hasn't done it yet, it may be worth telling them what political ramifications await them if they do.

Current Mood: angry
Current Music: Lily Allen - Fuck You

silveradept

Let us begin with a promise from the company distributing the movie The Toxic Avenger to erase at least $5 million in medical debt, with each additional million past 5 made at the box office resulting in another million dollars' worth of medical debt destroyed. (The debt itself will not cost $1 million to acquire, as much of the outstanding debt is bought from various debt collection companies for significantly lower than face value.)

If you're looking for something that takes most of the strangeness of a comic book universe and lets it be strange and odd, while also being very entertaining, The television adaptation of The Middleman is available to stream and download from the Internet Archive. There aren't enough episodes of it, and it would do well with a revival, but you can enjoy it for the moment.

If you are on a Typepad-hosted or Typepad-managed blog or service, export all necessary data and assets before September 30, 2025, otherwise all of your material will be inaccessible permanently. Typepad is shutting down, and this is their attempt to allow people to export everything before they turn it all off.

( These always feel like so much happens in such a short time )

Last out, a spiky dinosaur that new fossils suggest may have grown spikes from the neck at least a meter long, in addition to all the other spiny points.

A web application designed to tell you what kinds of animals you are picking up and putting down with authority, based on what weights you tell it you can lift and put down with authority. What Animal Do You Even Lift, Bro?

And a story of stones, and reforging the rings around them as the people who those stones were given to reforge themselves closer and closer to the people who they are. Nate and Lee have a wonderful relationship, and this shows in in so many ways.

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Current Mood: discontent
Current Music: 3OH3 - Starstrukk

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Per 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.

kaberett

Reading. ( Regula Ysewijn, McKinley Valentine, David J. Linden, Ann Leckie )

Skimmed several more pain-related papers.

... and I am also making some actual progress on catching up with my reading page! By which I mean "... I'm almost a whole entire week into May." I make no promises about how far I'm going to actually get.

Watching. 'nother episode of Farscape: S02E05 The Way We Weren't. Will concede that this made me go "... okay, yeah, I see why I needed to watch everything that went before, and damn it I am Having Some Feelings".

I have now sat or indeed wiggled my way through through Squish The Fish (Cosmic Kids' "baby yoga") in its entirety, it being a great favourite of The Toddler. I continue to have fascinating conversations about things that are easy for toddlers versus for grown-ups with the resident physiotherapist.

Cooking. A sweetcorn, tomato and runner bean curry, unearthed via Eat Your Books when I realised I had somewhat unintentionally got the nice organic veg box people to bring us runner beans (of which I am generally suspicious because of the texture of the pod).

Two loaves of actually vaguely competent bread (turns out scraping together the executive function to make the timing work... works better).

For breakfast this morning: the next recipe from the Welsh cakes book, being blackberry and apple splits (thereby using up some of the stewed apple in the freezer!). Could stand to have significantly less sugar than the recipe suggested and frozen blackberries very much want to make something that could only generously be called a purée rather than a soup, and definitely benefitted from being left to stand and cool before any attempt is made at the actual splitting, but A is very happy so I am content :)

Eating. Pizza Express takeaway to go with the Farscape on Tuesday evening when we were very, very tired.

Lunch in the café at Forty Hall this afternoon, featuring orange-and-lavender loaf cake!

Blackberries and onions and tomatoes and my mother's fig jam. Many very good food. Very pleased yes.

Exploring. Forty Hall! We went on an ADVENTURE this afternoon to get LUNCH there, which was slightly complicated by the part where ( breathing, everything is fine )

such that I spent a significant amount of time on the way both there and back again going "nope, need to stop" and spending a while lying on the grass staring up at the blue sky and the wispy white clouds through the various oak trees we passed. I have thoughts about this specific medical experience that I might write up elsewhen, BUT we WENT ON AN ADVENTURE and explored the farm shop and had lunch/afternoon tea in the café and walked around the walled garden and went home VIA THE (outskirts of the) BEAVER ENCLOSURE (thank you all, looking up that link means I have just discovered that TOURS NOW EXIST as of last month!!!) (more context: first beavers reintroduced to London after something like 400 years, back in 2022). Very very pleased to have managed this.

Creating. Hmm. I haven't been creating, as such, but I have definitely been consulting with A about some 3d prints to make sorting the in-game currency easier at Admin: the LRP!

Growing. Everything is tomatoes. I have not managed to get overwintering onions going; maybe tomorrow?

Rooted lemongrass potted up; let's see how long it takes me to kill it this time.

Observing. Alas no beavers, but lots of excellent birds, including two excursions (one solo, one partnered) to visit the cootlings :) The one that hatched last (by a considerable margin) is very definitely still no more than about half the size of its elder siblings!

denise posting in

dw_news

A 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.

umadoshi

Two wildly different media signal boosts:

--The Murderbot & More Humble Bundle is available for almost two more weeks! (I already have all but one ebook in there, so I'm not pouncing personally, but it's a great collection!)

--Via a couple of people, Javier Grillo-Marxuach recently shared on Bluesky that The Middleman is now streaming on Archive.org. (This is probably my definitive answer to the classic "what canceled show would you revive if you could?" question, although at this point it's not really "revive" so much as "magically keep from being canceled in the first place so it could've just carried on". This show deserved so much more--or at the bare minimum, to have had its season 1 finale actually filmed, while in this timeline 12/13 episodes were filmed. Like. Come ON, studios.)

umadoshi

Reading:

scruloose and I finished listening to Rogue Protocol! Here's hoping future installments listened to via Hoopla don't have the weird audio glitches that this one did. I think we're probably going to go with chronological order rather than publication order, and if so, I think that gives us two more novellas before the novel. I suspect I'll lean toward not having an audiobook on the go during the fall crunch at Dayjob, but hopefully we can get at least one novella in before that starts up.

I finished These Burning Stars (Bethany Jacobs) and found it more engrossing than I'd expected at first, but I don't feel a need to rush out and read the second book. (Given how this book was constructed, my guess is that the second will be a fairly different experience? But I don't actually know that.) I also read Stephen Graham Jones' Mongrels, which I liked; there are some things I'm still a bit fuzzy on in terms of the backstory/worldbuilding, but it feels likely that that was a deliberate choice.

Current fiction: The Future of Another Timeline, which I think is my first Annalee Newitz book.

Non-fiction: I've been doing some more cookbook reading, and I'm still reading Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World, and I've now also got Goblin Mode: How to Get Cozy, Embrace Imperfection, and Thrive in the Muck (McKayla Coyle) on the go. Given that my non-fiction intake is generally quite low, this is...well, a whole lot. I'm not getting the feeling that I'll actually take much away from Goblin Mode, but it's kinda fun, so I'm pressing on with it.

Meat-puppetry: I got my first A1C test since April, and got a 5.8 result. (After a 5.9 in April and a 5.8 in December.)

I don't know what was different about how the test was administered (it was even the same person who did my last one, I'm 99% sure), but that was a couple of days ago and my fingertip still hurts a bit (it's improving steadily, so I don't think anything is wrong-wrong) and was very faintly bruised. O_o Dunno what's up with that, but hopefully it increases the odds that next time I'll remember to ask them to use the side of a finger, not the pad. I need that!

Weathering: The province overall is still too dry. Our region got a very respectable rainfall early last week (? It's a bit of a blur), but the area with a major wildfire got almost nothing from that weather system. What we got was nowhere near enough to properly refill the water reservoirs, and Halifax Water reports that they've noticed very little change in water consumption since they started asked residents to voluntarily conserve water (I've seen multiple people mention seeing their neighbors out watering their fucking lawns), so it's possible mandatory restrictions will be rolled out. (Unless something's changed drastically overnight; I haven't checked Bluesky yet today, which is where I get nearly all of my local info.) People are allowed in the woods again in this area, though.

>.< Naturally, it appears that golf courses are officially exempt from the "STOP WATERING YOUR GRASS" requests.

kaberett

Went out to get mozzarella to have with lunch. Realised halfway down the hill that we could go all the way down the hill and watch the latest batch of cootlings. DID SO while eating raspberries. Excellent.
Lunch also included home-made Tomatoes and Basils and Bread, and also separately a small baguette with fig jam courtesy of my mother and brie courtesy of Somerset via The Supermarket. V pleasing.
Excellent chapter of book has introduced me to all kinds of things including pain asymbolia.
I have DONE SOME ADMIN: THE LRP PAPERWORK. There is paperwork that is DONE and consequently in the RECYCLING. I have sent SO MANY E-MAILS. I am getting some really lovely responses! And soon there will be FEWER THINGS.
Playing with pens! Continuing to really enjoy playing with pens.

kaberett

BREAD. I have coaxed myself back into giving it vaguely sensible timings, and shockingly it works better when I don't leave it to get sad and lonely.
I slightly tripped and bought myself a writing slope last week? ... I am somehow surprised that it's being useful, specifically for when I'm being a horrible laptop + paperwork goblin on the sofa.
SPEAKING OF WHICH, I am going through a bunch of tragically overdue paperwork for Admin: the LRP purposes (the person it is overdue to is... me) and found the answer to a mystery. (I am somewhat baffled that I apparently got the answer to this mystery at the second event this year and yet had completely forgotten that I'd managed anything of the kind until Just Now, two weeks before E4; I think I'm probably just going to chalk this up as another piece of evidence that my brain just... wasn't... working very well at all in June.)
TOMATOES. Actually this is related to the Good Bread -- I had an excellent bread-and-butter-and-tomatoes-and-parsley lunch, which was delightful. The Purple Ukraine are so good and I like them so much.
Today I have managed non-zero tidying, and the flat is marginally better and more usable for it. Mostly sorting out some of my gardening horrors on the patio; partly Wrangling The Dishwasher and some of the washing up; partly the aforementioned overdue paperwork, a consequence of which is putting a bunch of paper IN THE RECYCLING. Is good.

kaberett

A coaxed me out of the house for lunch; they'd been intending to spend the day in the office, but Shenanigans ensued such that they needed to pick something up from home and also the office canteen had run out of the veggie option, and by this time the triptan was more-or-less working. So we had zapiekanka at the market in the sunshine, and lo, it was good.
I apparently somehow managed to duck into the BHF charity shop right before it started raining heavily, and upon reemerging from poking at homeware and books at the back was startled to find that it was no longer raining heavily, but that everything was suddenly and inexplicably (at least briefly at least to me, in my migraine-addled state) damp.
I have finally picked up Lake of Souls (Ann Leckie), which I absolutely pre-ordered and absolutely was very excited about but am only now getting to, and I am having A LOT OF FEELINGS. SO many feelings.
A brought me ice cream from the freezer. Raspberry ripple, which I was inexplicably in the mood for, and the hazelnut + hazelnut brittle.
... and in fact I am going to go and be in a sleepy pile. Yes. That can be thing number five.

hunningham

At some point I will do a happy post celebrating little joys but this here right now is me venting

Sleep. My sleep up the wall / down the creek. I've had about 3 or 4 hours sleep Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday night. Waking up about 3am and NOT going back to sleep. I feel horrible. Sleep has been bad all throughout August, thought at first it would be better when father-in-law went home, and then I was thinking it would be better when visit to my mother was over, and then..

But it's not getting any better.

It's as if my body & mind are at war with me. I cannot sleep and I do not know why.

I know about sleep hygiene, regular bed time & getting up time (hah!), avoiding screens, blue light, keeping bedroom just for sleeping, keeping bedroom dark & cool, lots of time outside in the daylight, importance of exercise, not exercising too late in the day, relaxing, reducing stress, mindfulness practice, yoga, avoiding alcohol, sugar, caffeine. I have not tried the healing power of crystals.

Gah. So tired. So fed-up.

kaberett

Subtitle 50 irresistibly nostalgic sweet treats and comforting classics... featuring "Trinity burnt cream":

Also known as crème brûlée, old recipes for versions of this pudding are found in various parts of Britain and Europe. Its association with Trinity College, Cambridge goes back to at least the nineteenth century.

Despite my documented interest in crème brûlée and, you know, having grown up in Cambridge, I had somehow never come across this before?! And yet it's inexplicably clearly attested on Wikipedia. Nominally this means I should probably be indexing the "Ethnicity" of the dish as "English" as well as "French" but, frankly, je refuse, and even Trinity have the grace to say:

The story that crème brûlée itself was invented at the College almost certainly has no basis in fact.

It's not even like the National Trust is making a point of having all the recipes in this book be of British origin! Clearly-identified non-British culinary sources include Italy, Latvia, and Russia! (... the Welsh- and Scottish-origin puddings have headnotes mysteriously quiet on said origins, though.) AND YET. Crème brûlée! Trinity! Really.

umadoshi

Today marks twelve years since Jinksy and Claudia came to live with us. Twelve! (I mean, this should be easier to believe, it having been Jinksy's twelfth birthday three months ago.) *selects icon* Look how little they once were!

We've decided to give ourselves a four-and-a-half-day weekend (I'm going to work only a half day tomorrow to match

scruloose's schedule), and a good chunk of that has to be focused on freelance work--the volume of Pet Shop of Horrors I'm working on is due in just over two weeks, and they're hefty books. (IIRC this edition is seven omnibus volumes and the series originally came out as ten standard volumes.)

There, we'll call that an update.

Current Mood: okay

cahn

I have been sitting on this for months but I can finally tell you that the book I have been doing a ton of beta-reading for is out! Love Medley, by Lyssa Fairbanks, is a romance novel. One of the two protagonists is Lucy, a third-gen Chinese-American fourth-year medical student. She's quite bright and often goes full speed ahead at a moment's notice, which can be both a good and a bad thing; as the book opens, she is just finding her way out of an abusive relationship. The other protagonist is Jake, a Midwestern ER nurse who moonlights as a dueling pianist. Jake is a musical people-person; as the book opens, he is finding his way free of his emotionally controlling family. Lucy enlists Jake's help as a fake boyfriend to get her toxic ex to leave her alone, but will this lead to more? (...I mean, it's a romance novel, that was a rhetorical question.)

It's part of a projected 4-book series involving a close friend-group of four, of whom Lucy is one, who are making their way through medical school. (And the second book will be F/F, I've read the rough draft and am excited about that one too!) Jake, not to be outdone, has his own friends as well! As usual, I adore the ensemble scenes more than the actual romance. ;) (A me thing, of course! The romance is also very nice!)

The book includes a content notes page that cites explicit sex scenes, emotional abuse (on-page), physical abuse (off-page), explicit language, emotionally abusive parents. It is also very clearly a romance book, and I know this is not everyone's favorite cup of tea, but if you like romances then I think it's a great contender in the genre!

I would like to give the kindle e-book to the first five people who tell me they'd like one (I'll update this post if/when that number is reached) -- please DM me with your email address :) I'm sure the author would very much appreciate it if you left an honest review on amazon, but don't feel compelled to -- this isn't an "exchange" for a review, this is just me doing this for fun :)

If you would like to support the author, the book is available on amazon here or signed copies are available from Left Bank Books here. It's also available on Kindle Unlimited.

(BTW, Lyssa Fairbanks is a pen name. If you know the author (which a couple of you do, or may be able to to figure out that you do), please do not talk publicly about their real name or how I know them, thank you!)

kaberett

-- no wait that's a lie, I also investigated an apple tree. (Unremarkable eating apples.)

But! Tomatoes!

a lap full of tomatoes, in reds and oranges and greens and golds and purpleish

Pictured varieties: Purple Ukraine, Blue Fire, misc green stripey, Orange Banana, Moneymaker. Buried so you can't see it is a Feo di Rio Gordo. I did not get the whole rainbow I was aiming for this year (alas the Yellow Pearshaped all failed, as did the Known green stripey), but I'm nonetheless pleased!

umadoshi

The other day, my phrasing when I tried to describe what the Glass Heart actors are doing was not at all as clear as it should've been!

So: It's not that the main cast in this show are faking playing the instruments. It's that none of them are musicians at all, and they learned to play the specific material for the show well enough to visually pass not only as being able to play but as being very good (the male lead is explicitly a musical genius), with full shots of them doing bits of it rather than having body doubles or clever cuts or anything, AND doing some pretty heavy-lifting acting at the same time. (What I don't know is whether their performances pass as looking professional to actual professional musicians, but one of the supporting cast is an actual singer and seems pretty impressed with it.)

The making-of feature I linked in my last post is specifically about that aspect of the show/their performances.