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  • Puppy Felix wishes you a very happy Winter Holiday of your choice.

    A very smol black and white Papillon puppy with giant upright ears looks at the camera with a cocked head.

    25 December 2023
  • If you were me, would you give this shameless little beggar a french fry? đŸ¶

    White, black, and tan papillon dog sitting on a red couch and smiling at the camera.

    24 October 2023
  • Finishing some handspun yarn

    After being down with a nasty cold most of this week, I got a little energy back today and decided to deal with some of the yarn I’ve spun but have not yet finished. I really have been in the mood to do some more spinning, but I’ve been dragging my feet on winding up the yarn I’ve already made, and I sorta told myself I would have to straighten that out before I start anything new.

    So, I’ve got a two-ply made of some kind of, uh, wool, but I don’t know what kind, because I can’t find the tag that came with it. It’s from the Hello Yarn fiber club, and it’s very nice, and what I do know is that it’s probably not Corriedale, because that’s what the next month’s wool was. Anyway. Here it is going into the bath. One ply is spun in the original variegated dark blue and gold colorway, and the other ply done in just the dark blue.

    The second yarn is a single ply mulberry silk and merino blend that I picked up at last year’s Black Sheep Gathering as a treat. It was lovely to spin, but the silk made it so soft that it came apart on me a few times while spinning. It was my first time spinning anything with silk in it, so chalk it up to learning. Everything seemed okay when I was winding it into a skein, though. I have enough of this to make something small, a little cowl or hat or maybe fingerless mitts. I spun it to spin it, but I’ll figure out something to knit with it. I love the colors on it so much — it’s too lovely to waste.

    #FiberArts đŸ§¶

    dark blue and gold two-ply handspun yarn going into soapy waterclose up of silky looking pink, spring green, and yellow handspun yarn

    13 October 2023
  • It was silly, really, how excited I was to find this at my local purveyor of notebooks.

    A mouse pad-sized Rhodia notebook that says “A mouse pad you can write on!”

    30 August 2023
  • “I’m just going to peek for a minute and see if this bush has any ripe berries yet
” đŸŒ±

    Closeup picture of blueberries in various stages of ripeness: some fat and blue, some pink, some still tiny and green. An hand holding many ripe blueberries.

    14 July 2023
  • RIV, Blaseball

    If you were very online in 2020, which a lot of us were, especially because we couldn’t go anywhere and we were glued to our laptop screens, you might have heard of Blaseball.

    I signed up for Blaseball after hearing about it on the Waypoint podcast, which I don’t often listen to, but my wife does, and we were listening to it in the car while our carpets were being cleaned. Spring of 2020 was, if you’ve forgotten, weird.

    I pulled the site up on my phone: “I love fake internet sports!” Hmmm, but which team to choose? The Hellmouth Sunbeams sounded intriguing, and The Seattle Garages were the close-ish-to-Portland team, but I grew up in Southern California, so the Los Angeles Tacos it was.

    I watched games and bets fervently on my second monitor during the day, trying to game the odds. Weird things happened, including the repeated appearance of a giant peanut who spoke to the fans and the teams as one. That is, when the server wasn’t crashed from the traffic, forcing the Internet Blaseball League Commissioner (and the devs) to declare a Siesta.

    On Twitter, I started seeing #Blaseball tweets: You are participating in the cultural event of Blaseball. We are all love Blaseball. The commissioner is doing a great job.

    RP player accounts—actual players being autogenerated names run through the Blaseball sim—started appearing on Twitter. Jessica Telephone. Whit Steakknife. Landry Violence. I joined the Blaseball Discord, and started a Twitter account for Patel BeyoncĂ©, the Tacos’ best player. Turns out someone else in the Discord really had their heart set on Patel, so I gave them the account and started an account for Wyatt (nĂ©e Wanda) Pothos.

    The community grew quickly, crazily—it was full of earnest, kind, and impassioned Zoomers and Millennials (Let’s Go Mills, Baby, Love the Mills) who created storylines, strategies, team propaganda, art, and music. A fan-run merch store, Blaseball Cares, sprung up, with proceeds going to various charities. Teams worked together on lore and voting strategies. The first time someone created art of Pothos, I practically danced. Together, the community developed deep player backstories, romances, friendships, and rivalries, playing them out on Twitter. It was exhilarating and exactly what so many of us needed that summer, this active and kind creative community.

    I was not there the day the Forbidden Book was opened, but I was there when Landry Violence was incinerated by a rogue umpire. I was there when the first players were shelled. I was there for the Snackrifice, in which the Tacos colluded with the entire Blaseball community to get our entire pitching team—including Pothos—shelled, and thus unable to pitch, a move of union, of solidarity. I was there when Mike Townsend, noted disappointment, made the ultimate sacrifice to save Jaylen Hotdogfingers, becoming a credit to his team.

    In my memory of that summer, Blaseball stands out as a weird, wild, obsessive, and beautiful time. I have such a sweet, soft spot in my heart for all of it, but especially for the creative, supportive, radical, queer Blaseball community. I’m deeply grateful to the Game Band for bringing us this wonderful unique time, for not just creating a game for us to play, but for playing the game with us.

    The Game Band recently came to the difficult conclusion that despite their best efforts, Blaseball just isn’t fiscally viable—while sad, it’s understandable. Now the ball parks are empty, the birds have dispersed, and the players can rest. Rest in Violence, Blaseball.

    3 July 2023
  • When you’re searching for “feminist bird club” but you type “book” by accident and now you are in TWO new clubs. #birding #feminism #reading 🐩📚

    2 July 2023
  • Well, after eight years of serious Buddhist practice, it finally happened: I made gassho 🙏 to a total stranger out in the world.

    26 June 2023
  • Diablo IV as Allegory for the 2016 Election: In this essay, I will show…

    12 June 2023

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