Continued academic adventures
Mar. 8th, 2026 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wildeabandonWait, did someone say sensible thing? How about instead I take that course (along with another one in Patristic Greek) as a standalone module - that's only 39 credits (compared to a standard of 30) this semester. What could possibly go wrong? My plan had been to start all the modules until a decision was made, and then drop at least one of the optional ones if I wasn't allowed to switch with the compulsory one. The fatal flaw in that plan is that I am now having Way Too Much Fun to do that. I will keep the option of dropping one or the other in reserve if I feel like I'm burning out. The workload is a lot, and I am slightly behind compared to where my timetable says I should be, but if life holds off on curveballs then I think I should be able to get caught up in the next week.
The Midrash course in particular is really really good. We had a couple of introductory lectures on generally background, one from an academic and theoretical perspective, and one in which we looked at what what midrash says about itself. After that we got stuck in to actually doing the reading and interpreting. We're studying the Petikot (a series of introductory comments) of Lam Rabbah, an exegesis of Lamentations. It's a completely different approach to that taken in traditional Christian Biblical Studies, somehow both more open to individual and non-literal interpretations and also more demanding of a rigorous justification based on the precise details of the words of scripture.
It's quite a small group - four students, and two professors - Rabbi Dr David Meyer, who is leading us, and Pierre van Hecke, my erstwhile teacher of Ugaritic and Hebrew, who is engaging more like a fifth student. It's really delightful, having spent a fair amount of time over the last 18 months learning to read Hebrew, to be actually putting that learning into practice. My command of the language is probably the weakest in the group, but I'm just about managing to keep up, and at least some of my hermeneutical suggestions in class have been meeting with positive responses, which is encouraging.
Excellent evening
Mar. 7th, 2026 02:20 amvvalkyriAnd then I sent another friend a happy birthday and our messaging history looked like we hadn't talked in like a year and I said I was going to have about a half an hour drive home and care to chat and then we did chat about all sorts of different things for about 4 hours past both of our bedtime and she's on the other coast and it was lovely almost like going to visit as I did several years ago before she moved across the country.
But Joe was going to be coming for lunch at 11:00 and I'm realizing if I also want to possibly be galavanting around in an inflatable frog suit at Stand Up For Science (noon to 3 near Hirshhorn) at noonish I should probably tell him to show up earlier than 11:00 if possible.
Eep ;)
Surprise tears
Mar. 5th, 2026 05:03 pmvvalkyriBut this post is inspired by my mild befuddlement at just how much Rusty Old American Dream by David Wilcox makes me cry.
Some of us on the mutual Aid group are meeting at dew drop inn later tonight for a planning meeting. And someone referenced a song called Uneasy Rider that mentions a Dew Drop Inn (its lyrics are quite the ride) and something about the first lines gave me the earworm.
So I brought up the YouTube and I was singing along and started crying. And then later grabbed the lyrics to drop back into that chat and sang it without the YouTube and was back to sobbing.
I certainly didn't get enough sleep last night. But come to think of it I kind of remember this song has often done this. It's probably easy enough to figure out which lyric.
In other news it's been nice out today and I was up till 6:00 a.m. because someone called at 3:00 when they saw I was up because I sent something to a group chat and I guess that was helpful because I did actually almost finish unpacking from Presidents Day weekend. But it was less helpful because when I finally managed to get off the phone at 5:00 I was quite awake.
I had had tentative plans with happy that I had forgotten about and then remembered and then sent him a note at 5:00 saying hey I'm not in bed yet even and then his meeting ran late enough that he messaged right about the same time I actually opened my eyes and then we made our way to falafel and came back and I'm sad that falafel Incorporated is no longer carrying their vegan shawarma because they've started doing chicken shawarma and they had already had chicken shawarma but I think they're just trying to keep their menu very narrow. But I expressed my dismay and then someone else came in and is vegan herself and doesn't like falafel so she left and did not buy anything and I noted that maybe the people behind the counter might want to keep a running tally as to how many people Express dismay and how many people then leave without buying something. Their vegan shawarma was amazing.
But the falafel salad was also good.
And then somehow the last two and a half hours have gone poof. Some of it has been trying to follow up on maybe getting some kites made since No Kings 3 is the same day as the Cherry blossom kite festival and one of the events will be pretty nearby.
And then there was trying to signal boost a call for people to call their Congress critters and complain about dismantling department of education and trying to shove special education in with like department of Labor.
And then I'm not even sure.
I'm kind of tempted to go to Blues tonight because I like both of the people DJing but then that complicates matters for the earlier part of the evening.
And I'm also just so exasperated with kind of everything of late.
And how is it March?
Oops I seem to have gone forever again
Mar. 4th, 2026 11:09 pmvvalkyriI don't even remember when it was I last posted. There's all sorts of things I've been highly annoyed about lately but haven't really been posting here. I just got back from steel City Blues which I'd sort of been debating whether I was going to or not and eventually decided literally the night before possibly even the day of.
I had a couple weeks of my leg being highly annoying and that finally finished in the aftermath of President's Day weekend, which was also very very good.
I bought a new phone right before President's Day weekend because my normal phone was busy rebooting itself constantly. And I hate this phone so much. Nothing is where it's supposed to be it's incredibly slow the system UI keeps crashing and I didn't come to the conclusion that I wanted to try to return it to Best buy until after the two weeks window for doing so and besides they were going to charge like a $50 restock fee. So bleh. I also am pretty sure that even though nominally I got all my messages to transfer they did not in fact transfer because I sent some birthday greetings to various people and I was like wait a second there should be some sort of message history there and indeed at least with one of them she had messages history...
Drove back from Pittsburgh yesterday and boy howdy was it not hugely clever or two opt for the not toll road. I spent time driving through clouds in the dark. On one lane needs direction roads which every so often actually had reflectors. Do not recommend.
I managed to host some acro in my lobby tonight, with the guy who's nice enough to let me base him and my next door neighbor.
I had done a very little bit of acro over President's Day weekend and otherwise it had been weeks and weeks. And I probably will be doing a blues class instead on Sunday and a friend who lives only a couple blocks away is moving to Alaska so I don't see myself going up to Laurel for acro on Saturday and besides there's the March for science and maybe I'll be there in a frog costume because oh right yeah I was part of that state of the Swamp Thing and I'm quite happy about it.
Last week was I went up to the Wilson building to be part of the free DC filling the hearing room for the MP d oversight hearing.
By the way, DHS is trying to buy a big Warehouse in Maryland where there's a number of different ones. Other places have been successful so far at making that not happen.
I really need to do better at not doing things by dictation
Story recommendations
Feb. 23rd, 2026 04:29 pmilzolendeI did the book cover for a supervillain web series, The Tragedy of the Titanium Tyrant.
Someone's leading a sci-fi worldbuilding project called the Atmaverse. It is, so far as I understand, intended as hard scifi plus an FTL method. There is a significant focus on alien civilizations.
People who dislike isekais with slavery will perhaps like the John Brown Isekai.
I recommend a lot of Saphroneth's work. It's better-organized on AO3 but more up-to-date on SpaceBattles.
Comprehension Castle (Part 2) is a set of 'screenshots' from a fake game.
If you want to see someone's overpowered OC beat up everyone, Mitraka is fun. I have some complaints but I keep reading it.
The first several Starship's Mage books feel like the author was like "what if we had a bunch of cool stuff all in one setting? wouldn't that be super awesome?" and then committed pretty hard to it. (I haven't finished the series yet.)
1632 sends an entire town into the past. You can read the first book free.
The Wicked + The Divine is a finished comic series.
Chunks of Worm is a set of Worm snippets. (I haven't finished Worm, so take my Worm recommendations with a grain of salt.)
Of the Coming of the Star Warrior is a brief Kirby/Silmarillion crossover.
The Background Noise of Defiance is a cute Star Wars series.
Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue is an HP fic where the non-wizard government gets involved.
The Legend Of Zelda: Speedrun Of The Wild: What happens after speedrunner Link beats up Ganon in his underwear with improvised weapons?
Something to Fear / Someone to Fight: Steven Universe post-movie fic.
Wolf Incident Postmortem is a Boy who Cried Wolf epistolary fic.
Spinning Silver is a fairy tale inspired work in which lots of minor characters all have their own goals and take actions towards those goals. It feels very well-put-together and complete.
Karl K. Gallagher does some decent short stories.
Conditional Release is a fic in which the Valar take a different strategy with Melkor.
Empty Graves, the fic where Martha Kent keeps encountering time travelers.
Sherden Pact is someone's Khornite faction in Warhammer 40K which is focused on Effective Murder Maximization. This sermon may be a decent intro.
Constellations is a Worm/Ōkami crossover where Taylor gets a canine friend.
On Silksong Wishwalls
Feb. 23rd, 2026 03:26 pmilzolendeSilksong has some “wishwalls” where people post requests. A wish board that is “empty” of requests for Hornet's purposes still seems to have markers on it, just smaller ones.
These could, perhaps, be quests Hornet feels other people can handle.
So maybe someone else is looking at the board and seeing things like this:
Shawl Stitching
"My shawl is falling to pieces and is no longer befitting of a pilgrim. With a bit of thread, it could be good as new."
Repair Pebb’s shawl.
Reward: 5 rosaries.
There's also plausibly wishes specifically asking for other NPCs, the way some of the wishes specifically ask for Hornet.
Computer game recommendations
Feb. 23rd, 2026 06:25 amilzolendeDemon Bluff is a turn-based single-player card game derivative of Blood on the Clocktower. It's very compute-intensive but I like it. The itch.io "demo" is in fact a complete game.
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection is a bunch of little puzzles. There are mobile app versions with no ads or such.
Loop Hero is a paid game where you restore features to a world by playing cards as the hero walks through it, and you also get to improve a camp. I think it's pretty fun, though some optional content could be better implemented.
Timberborn is currently in Early Access but it's pretty fun to see someone else play.
Jazzybee's Stardew Valley Character Creator is a neat dollmaker (are dollmakers games?). With itch-dl, it's easy to poke through the assets for recombination, too.
Also Stardew Valley and Terraria are good too, but I expect people here already knew that.
Non-game software recommendations
Feb. 23rd, 2026 06:22 amilzolendejpegtran is a command-line tool for losslessly cropping jpegs. I think JPEGclub is not a crazy website to link here. Great for making icons.
ImageWorsener has the fancy dither options you wished GIMP had. There are extra dither modes to be had, if you remember that you run a modern computer with the memory for them.
yt-dlp is a YouTube downloader that can automatically add metadata, grab your preferred resolution, download only audio and not video, et cetera.
itch-dl is useful for downloading games from itch.io, though sometimes you have to pre-decompress a brotli file it might produce.
SvgPathEditor is great for getting into the little details of SVG path strings while still seeing what you're doing.
FanFicFare is a useful downloader that can even handle fiction.live and SpaceBattles.
Infinite Mac is neat for running old software.
trash-cli lets you put things in the trash from the command line, instead of immediately deleting them.
Pandoc does format conversion.
poppler-utils extracts images from PDFs.
pngquant does lossy PNG compression, which is pretty different from lossy JPEG compression and suits different sorts of files.
Qalculate! has a decent command line calculator mode. It sure beats opening up Python and then having to import math.
mpv is better than VLC at handling some video formats, and also supports going backwards one frame at a time, not just forwards.
Good and bad things with celiac
Feb. 23rd, 2026 05:16 amilzolendeThings I particularly miss while avoiding gluten include:
- Bread and bagels. I've been too cowardly to try substitutes – if I don't try any bread substitutes then for me they exist in a superposition of being adequate and being inadequate, but if I try them and they're inadequate then I'm certain.
- Refried beans. You would think this would be fine, since they're beans, but I like plain black refried beans with a few spices but no added oil or sugar, and nobody I know of who does gluten free refried beans also makes those. I should arguably try for a batch at home but then it wouldn't be a convenience food.
- Mock chicken nuggets. All the vegan nuggets are coated with wheat bread crumbs. There are dead-chicken nuggets that are gluten free but I have been virtuously not buying them, for which I deserve all the points.
- Same goes for vegan hot dogs.
- Broth concentrate. Better than Bouillon, I miss you so much. I want something full of yeast extract and garlic and onion, not MSG and sugar.
- Chinese-style soy sauce. Yes, it is different from Kikkoman.
- My preferred instant ramen. Instant rice noodle soups aren't the saaaame.
- Being chill about cross-contamination and sharing dishes.
- Restaurant food. Even when a restaurant claims to be gluten-free it's basically a gamble.
- Buying cheap store-brand foods. I pay like 1.5x the price for canned chickpeas these days.
- Carmex lip balm. My understanding is the company also does products with non-certified-GF oats and I don't know if they do anything about cross-contam.
- Using arbitrary brands of soaps. Stop putting barley in things!
Things which are surprisingly fine include:
- Desserts
- I can make banana-chocolate muffins at home which are pretty good.
- Same goes for brownies.
- The grocery store has premade cakes which are also good. Expensive, but cakes are for special occasions anyway.
- Chocolate tofu pie is easy to do a gluten free version of, you just need a premade GF crust.
- Most Breyers ice cream flavors are gluten free.
- NuGo does a bunch of gluten free protein bars.
- Chips
- Tostitos plain tortilla chips are generally gluten free.
- Kettle Brand chips also are.
- Tater Tots
- Hot cereal: I personally seem to tolerate certified gluten free oats, possibly, but for people who don't there's Cream of Rice which can be cooked in the microwave.
- Any old dry beans, as long as I sort and wash 'em first.