figtreeandvine

[figtreeandvine]

Since Leslie Fish was mentioned.... Filk written and sung by her, used for a Star Trek vid:

sometimes I stay up at night & think about all the kirk/spock girlies who have passed away like? you loved them too didn't you? you loved them just as much as me, did you think of them one last time? I hope you found your th'y'la in your lifetime. I'm glad we are all connected through them.

#filk #star trek #Youtube

[figtreeandvine]

#some days

[figtreeandvine]

Years Decades ago a linguistics professor I know personally got into a discussion with her mother who was complaining about a bit of modern English usage. She got curious, looked into it...and turned it into a research project/paper. (She used her research methods to show that her mother used the construct she was decrying.) This was out of her specialty of Germanic linguistics, mind you, but it was just for shits and grin.

The paper was published and got a lot of attention because it broke containment and hit the popular science press. She lamented that for years it was her most cited paper.

Studying linguistics is actually so wonderful because when you explain youth slang to older professors, instead of complaining about how "your generation can't speak right/ you're butchering the language" they light up and go “really? That’s so wonderful! What an innovative construction! Isn't language wonderful?"

[figtreeandvine]

Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife series has a main character with one hand. He doesn't want to ask for help, but that is explicitly addressed as not a good thing.

I wish there was more representation of disabilities and chronic illness in fantasy, science fiction and action genres.

Not just a side character with 30 seconds of screentime. An important character that doesn't just exist to further the storylines of other characters. I want a character that doesn't get "cured" or healed. A character that stays disabled and/or chronically ill. A character that isn't afraid to ask for help. One that doesn't think they're a burden and doesn't try to hide their disability/ chronic illness.

I want to see how it affects them, not just know they're disabled/chronically ill and it jist never gets mentioned again. I don't mean it should be their entire personality but being disabled and or chronically ill can affect many parts of life.

I just wish there was more representation of disabilities and chronic illness that shows every part of it. Especially in fantasy and science fiction it's lacking.

[figtreeandvine]

Thank you, Tumblr! The kitchen is clean.

I realized after I made the poll that I had to vote to see the results. Which forced me to decide, so I picked Kitchen and started cleaning. Ya'll agreed.

Help me, Tumblr!

#naclyoho #day 2

[figtreeandvine]

Submitted by @sky-the-snail-fanatic

#I used to be able to sing one song in Chamorro #definitely never hit Eurovision #Fanohge Chamaru #Guam's anthem

[figtreeandvine]

Kilgore’s beans

#cats #mighty tasty looking beans!

[figtreeandvine]

Years and years ago, I read a book on cryptography that I picked up because it looked interesting--and it was!

But there was a side anecdote in there that stayed with me for more general purposes.

The author was describing a cryptography class that they had taken back in college where the professor was demonstrating the process of "reversibility", which is a principle that most codes depend on. Specifically, it should be easy to encode, and very hard to decode without the key--it is hard to reverse the process.

So he had an example code that he used for his class to demonstrate this, a variation on the Book Code, where the encoded text would be a series of phone numbers.

The key to the code was that phone books are sorted alphabetically, so you could encode the text easily--picking phone numbers from the appropriate alphabetical sections to use ahead of time would be easy. But since phone books were sorted alphabetically, not numerically, it would be nearly impossible to reverse the code without exhaustively searching the phone book for each string of numbers and seeing what name it was tied to.

Nowadays, defeating this would be child's play, given computerized databases, but back in the 80s and 90s, this would have been a good code... at least, until one of the students raised their hand and asked, "Why not just call the phone numbers and ask who lives there?"

The professor apparently was dumbfounded.

He had never considered that question. As a result, his cipher, which seemed to be nearly unbreakable to him, had such an obvious flaw, because he was the sort of person who could never coldcall someone to ask that sort of thing!

In the crypto book, the author went on to use this story as an example of why security systems should not be tested by the designer (because of course the security system is ready for everything they thought of, by definition), but for me, as a writer, it stuck with me for a different reason.

It's worth talking out your story plot with other people just to see if there's a "Why not just call the phone numbers?" obvious plot hole that you've missed, because of your singular perspective as a person. Especially if you're writing the sort of plot where you have people trying to outsmart each other.

#writing #good advice #in a series I like‚ hundreds of people each month are trying to sneak through one heavily guarded entrance #...and ignoring the 100-mile surrounding border that's undefended

[figtreeandvine]

#personally my favorite is 'fat horses'

[figtreeandvine]

Imagine if we created tiny cleaning robots that could clean our houses automatically with no effort from us. No recharging, no subscription fee, self-replicating!

Now imagine we lost the control codes for them.

I think I just invented ants.

#sf #sorta #ants‚ damnit! #mine

[figtreeandvine]

Good news, everybody!

The Biden administration on Thursday placed the final cornerstone of its plan to tackle climate change: a regulation that would force the nation’s coal-fired power plants to virtually eliminate the planet-warming pollution that they release into the air or shut down.

The regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency requires coal plants in the United States to reduce 90 percent of their greenhouse pollution by 2039, one year earlier than the agency had initially proposed. The compressed timeline was welcomed by climate activists but condemned by coal executives who said the new standards would be impossible to meet. The E.P.A. also imposed three additional regulations on coal-burning power plants, including stricter limits on emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin linked to developmental damage in children, from plants that burn lignite coal, the lowest grade of coal. The rules also more tightly restrict the seepage of toxic ash from coal plants into water supplies and limit the discharge of wastewater from coal plants.

The rules require carbon capture and sequestration from their exhaust, which basically makes them uneconomical. New natural gas power plants will face the same requirements, but with existing plants exempted.

Former President Donald J. Trump, who is campaigning to return to the White House, has said he would overturn the regulation if he defeats Mr. Biden in November.

#climate change #us politics #the right to Breathe Free

[figtreeandvine]

Help me, Tumblr!

#naclyoho

[figtreeandvine]

Free to good home: Mystery where math professor finds a dead body on campus while walking to her office. The victim is an unidentified homeless man who's been seen around campus for a few days, maybe a week. The campus police immediately hand the case off to the local police because he's not a student. The local police don't want to deal with a murder investigation on the campus, plus "It's just a homeless guy, probably got in an argument over drugs."

The math professor starts looking into who the man was, who he had been before he was an "unidentified homeless man". Gets pulled into investigating the murder as things turn up.

Title: Solve For X

#writing prompt

[figtreeandvine]

#cats #kittens #literally falling asleep

[figtreeandvine]

You can't cut soft cheese in thin slices or wedges because it just gets squished, but you can with hard cheese, cause the protein holds it together. Casein point:

[figtreeandvine]

I think I'm going to do a NaClYoHo month, or at least try, because the house has gotten out of hand what with my mother's illness, my dental work, and general ick.

So today:

Straightened the living room, removing clutter.

Put the couch blankets in the wash (will hang them outside to dry as soon as the washer finishes).

Refilled the sugar and flour canisters, thus getting the sugar and flour bags off the counter where they'd languished since I bought them...over a week ago.

Folded stray clean laundry that accumulated on top of the dryer and put it away.

Sorted my underwear drawer, tossing some old stuff and relocating other stuff.

#naclyoho #day 1

[figtreeandvine]

One of the things I love when I'm at a park or the beach or some other "destination" is spotting people taking photos of their companions--their friends, family, significant other--and going up to them. "Would you like a picture with both of you/all of you?"

Because as a not-young, overweight woman, often accompanied by a disabled elderly woman, no one thinks I'm going to run off with their phone! So they hand me their phone, pose with the other person/people, and I take a half dozen photos, assuming that at least one will get everyone's eyes open. I give them back their phone and off we go our separate ways, a little joy added to the universe.

The thing is, I once made digital scans of 300+ slides dating back from before I was born to my parents' divorce. I found four photos that included my father, because he was always the one taking the photos. There were literally more photos of chipmunks than of my dad! (My parents liked camping back then--or maybe it was just the only vacation they could afford--and "cheeky chipmunk investigates campsite looking for food" was a recurring leitmotif.)

So ensuring that those college students have at least one photo of all four of them, that...I like that. I do it for me, because it pleases me. It pleased them ("Oh, this one's going on Facebook!"), but I can selfishly enjoy being nice too.

Other people have done the same for me, will undoubtedly continue to do the same. The odds are good that the last photo I'll have of me and my mother together will be taken by a nameless stranger next to a waterfall. And I won't know at the time that it will be the last, and they'll never know that they did anything special.

Just a thought to end my ramble on: In thirty years no one is going to care much about a photo of yet another majestic mountain. But a photo of you, the you that you are now, that they'll care about. People change; mountains seldom do.

(Uh, just in case I've left the impression that those four photos are all I have left of my dad, he called today to gloat most unbecomingly about his early strawberry harvest. Mine are still three or four weeks out, damn it. Also, he has an almond tree that sprouted in his compost pile a few years ago and it set fruit this year???)

Not a photo of my father:

Still not a photo of my father, though I'm pretty sure that's my mother's hand:

You thought I was kidding about the chipmunks?

#rambling thoughts #mine