#feettootie

[kedreeva]

I'm not dead, and from about April on that *was not* a foregone conclusion. I truly did not think I'd see the new year. If this is a bummer you don't have to post it. ✌

Survival is never a bummer, it’s a celebration.

Humpback whale males all sing the same long song as each other during mating season, sometimes for hours, and the song changes from season to season.

(To those reading, while you are welcome to still send me kind thoughts you have about yourself, I am will not be answering new asks with animal facts)

[sartorialadventure]

Do you mind if I ask how you did learn, if not from books? I'm not demanding your credentials, I'm just curious.

lol well it's a good thing you're NOT demanding my credentials, because I don't have any! I just picked it up. I'm interested in history and material culture, and I just sort of... absorbed the info? I see a lot of art from various periods, I watch documentaries... When somebody asks me a specific question (like the difference between the robe de cour and the court mantua) I google around until I figure it out. It's also why, when people ask me sewing questions, I have NO idea of the answer. I mostly know what the fashion from various eras LOOKS like, not how it's put together! My only credentials are in literature (I have a PhD in that) but they didn't really talk much about costume. lol

[musette22]

Hiya- that interview with Seb, in the black t-shirt? Do you know the where's and when's? I don't see any links with the gifs.

Hello darling! I’m sorry for the late reply, today has ben crazy! Hmm, I’m not entirely sure what exact interview that was from, but he is wearing that black t-shirt in this interview too! Hope that’s helpful <3

[luninosity]

You know, I'm looking at the gif set of the trip to Phoenix, and I've got my shipper goggles on same as anybody. But the hip squeeze? For reals? We know both Chris and Seb have anxiety issues. Seb has said a couple of times he has trouble concentrating and we've all seen him check out a bit. Chris unobtrusively getting Seb's attention, checking in to make sure he's good, warms my heart more than anything. Don't we all want someone to take such care of us. (Shout out to Awesome Husband)

I LOVE THIS SO MUCH

I love the idea that it’s a routine gesture by now, part of their physical shorthand - you okay? / I’m okay / I’m here if you need me / you keep me here and grounded - and soft and sweet and unobtrusive but undeniable.

Sebastian doesn’t like flying, and of course they just got off a plane; of course he’s also himself and ridiculous, roaring like a baby lion and all, but it’s the kind of hyper energy that comes with relief. And Chris knows that too, knows that Seb needs an anchor and a check-in to bring him back and steady him; Chris loves doing that, because it’s good for him too: he, Chris, is here with Seb and being what Sebastian - his Sebastian, his wonderful Sebastian who’s chosen him - needs, providing for Seb; he can do that, and they’re both warmed all through by every casual amazing reminder of that.

(Also Awesome Husband is marvelous and I am very lucky! He went outside to pick tomatoes yesterday - I usually do that - because I was having a conference with a student, and then got them started roasting, so I came downstairs to that! I love him.)

[pale-silver-comb]

So, I'm watching The Big Bang Job -Pluto Tv's all Leverage channel 👍- and during the beginning of the shootout, the reason Eliot isn't hitting anyone is because he doesn't want to. He kills a few of those guys because they're starting to flank him and he can use their guns and ammo. Then he hits the barrels of oil. I think that right up until that point he's hoping that he can get out. Nate got the girl out, I wonder if he's thinking he can still be relatively clean at the end. Clean for them.

That is honestly one of the best and most heartbreaking scenes. I think Christian Kane did such a good job of making us feel Eliot’s pain in that moment. Because you know Eliot would kill for any of them. He’d do it so easily if it meant keeping them safe (and, in Parker’s case back in season 2, if he felt it would ease some previous pain and trauma). 

Eliot is trying so hard to be good and the worst part is it’s not some addiction. He doesn’t miss that life. It’s not hard for him not to be that guy. What is hard is to keep going, to look in that mirror every day and know he’s one day further away from the man he used to be and yet he will never be that boy again, the one he longs to see. The one he is always looking for. And that moment is heartbreaking because you know, emotionally, using that gun its going to set him back. It’s one of the reasons I am so glad we have that scene between Eliot and Parker earlier in the episode, because while Eliot comea across as not needing anything, he does. He does and it’s Parker and Hardison still looking at him in the same way they always have.

[cesperanza]

So, I'm back on benzo's for the first time in 16 yrs, how you doin'? I have been rereading my fav stuff and just finished 4 Minute Window cover to cover. I've been reading *much* of your stuff (Due South!) but I'm wondering if 4MW is complete. This is not a nag to post something, just curiosity. I hope you and yours are well. I hope this whole thing is coherent cuz I've had my pill. 👍

Honest to God, I don’t know.  I always think it’s over?  Hell, I thought it was a one-shot, see what I know.  That said, I’ve come to a number of satisfying endings and each time thought, well, that’s it.  I do think this year ending story is pretty satisfying, too!  But that said, if I have something to say, I’ll say it.  I won’t not write it on principle or anything, but I do want to have an IDEA for it.  

[bettsfic]

OMG!OMG! Somebody else who doesn't like JW's Much Ado! I thought every moment of it was somehow just enough wrong to never be right. The timing was just continuously one beat off. It drove me up a tree! I guess I hang with the wrong crowd because I never hear anything but how great it was.

rip to your friends. i’d show them the wyndham version and see if their opinion still holds

[dietraumerei]

Do you needle felt? I always wanted to try that. I don't know what a histogram is? What do I think machine learning is and why isn't it that? I have no earthly idea why the museum sector is fucked, what might your opinion be about it? 😁

HELLO NEW FAVORITE PERSON thank you for these lovely questions and excuses to go off on some of my favorite topics! OK, in rough order:

I don’t needle felt, but I’d like to try too! A lot of the examples I see are, er, a little more twee than I like, but I’ve seen some lovely needlefelt paintings, and some of the little figures are really gorgeous! I think I might try to make a bunch of Christmas ornaments this year.

A histogram is a really, really neat chart that I don’t use enough. Basically, it looks like this:

Except what it’s measuring aren’t values themselves, but the number of times a value appears in a dataset. So for the dataset represented, there are about 26 records (or indices, or whatever) that have a value between 100 and 110. It’s such a fantastic tool for getting an idea of what a dataset looks like, where outliers might be, or patterns in the data -- if it’s a normal distribution (what’s usually called a bell curve; it’s what this chart shows), bimodal, etc. It’s also always very easy to make; in R the command is hist(dataset name, thing being measured). (I mean, you can get hella fancy, but if I’m just doing some quick explorations, it’s nice to be able to type like 25 characters and already be learning a ton of information.)

So yeah, histograms. Brilliant little things!

Here is my Machine Learning rant: every sector seems to think that it’s the solution to all their problems. It probably isn’t. ML is very good at doing repetitive tasks that humans aren’t very good at, and it’s good at doing a HUGE number of tasks very quickly. It’s not artificial intelligence, though, and it’s not always the best solution to the problem.

It’s also, honestly, not that hard? The mathematics underlying most ML models is very difficult, yes! But so many models have been turned into user-friendly functions, you basically need a quick tutorial on what the model is best suited for, and about four lines of code. This is really cool in one way -- I can incredibly easily build and run models that would have been intensive and difficult years ago! But it’s also sort of...lead to ML being a hammer, and every problem then looking like a nail, even though it isn’t. There’s a lot of misconception about what it’s good for and what it isn’t, and there’s a really dangerous misconception that ML models are free from the bias of whoever made them, which they are not.

In re: the museum sector: OK, this absolutely doesn’t apply to every museum, but for a lot of them, they’re really failing at serving any community beyond their own Board and other rich white people. Museum employees are generally horrifically underpaid, especially considering the amount of education they’re expected to have. There’s also an expectation that you spend a lot of time volunteering your hard-earned skills for free, before getting a paid job doing basically the same thing, which I find abhorrent.  Essentially, it’s a sector that could do so much to build community and welcome all people, but so many museums are really stuck in the past, not least because it’s a nearly impossible sector for anyone who isn’t already enormously privileged to break into. There’s a HUGE race imbalance in museum employees, and although most people who work in museums are women, the highest-ranking employees tend to be men.

And just speaking personally, I’ve found that, uh, every single museum and heritage org I’ve worked at is jaw-droppingly toxic, with kind of their most innocent act just being retaining employees for years who would have been fired anywhere else sometime about their third month on the job. A lot of this is probably related to the low pay, lack of respect, and the tensions between Boards and staff that seem to suffuse the sector.

I loved my work in the heritage sector and I still miss it, and I am incredibly bitter about how far the sector is from what it could be, because of race and gender and money. I don’t regret moving into data science that god knows has its own MASSIVE FUCKING ETHICAL ISSUES, but at least I’m being paid a decent, middle-class wage, and my boss values me and my co-workers are all, like, beyond basically competent at their jobs.

[brendaonao3]

Little Women was so good! The setting! The clothes! The colors! I loved all the extra bits, Jo being ambidextrous, the girls laying around in chemise and pantelettes. One of the scenes that struck me the most was at the Lawrence place, coming to collect Amy. The house is quiet, work is (not) being done, then there's noise and color and laughter. Then it abruptly gone, and we're left to feel how extra empty the space is now, and how the men are changed. Gorgeous!

No lie, Little Women is the best English-speaking film I saw last year - it was just a spectacular piece of work.

[toookish]

@feettootie replied to your post: my dinner plan fell through as the meat has not...

Scrambled egg and toast?

I NEVER HAVE BREAD IN MY HOUSE

[viperbranium]

Steve could have saved Bucky. It would have been late enough for some torture and a new arm. We didn't spend hardly 2 seconds with Bucky after Steve came back, so we DON'T KNOW whether he's altered in this new timeline. He could have been standing there being filled with new memories! ...but probably not. :-( Also, do we think that giving back the Soul stone returns the soul sacrificed for it? It matters not at all that we didn't see it in the movie. There's plenty of time for a reveal!

Actually Steve not having altered our Bucky’s past is the one thing we can be 100% sure of. Steve couldn’t have helped our Bucky in any way because time is linear for each individual - as in, one person can travel to a different point in the general flow of time, but for them, their past will still be their past.

The best way to explain this would be Nebula: if altering a character’s past had direct effects on their present versions, when Nebula killed the past version of herself, she herself would’ve died, but she didn’t. 

Steve might be able to help this other timeline’s Bucky, but not our Bucky (and likewise, him going to that other timeline and living with Peggy doesn’t mean Peggy’s husband and kids get retconned in our timeline!)

[sartorialadventure]

Katherin Parr . She'd been married to two old men, who she'd had to nurse, and all she wanted was the marry the young man she was in love with. Instead she got a diseased, violent king, who she had to nurse while dodging his attempts to kill her.

kittensforbrowncoats:

felt terrible for all of them but liked Anne B, Anne of C, and Catherine Parr.  Anne B was trying to be queen and push Catherine of A out which sucked but when all you have is your mind and body and don’t even own those what are you going to do?  Try for the best for yourself and yours without regard to anyone else.  Anne of C. made it out alive and without having to marry anyone else.  Catherine Parr only had to nurse a sick old man and outlive him (of course dying of childbirth after having married again had to be disappointing)

lol i’m sure she was very disappointed after dying :P 

magiclilybean:

Catherine Parr. Kind, loving, united the family, lived Elizabeth and Elizabeth loved here. Passionately religious but canny enough to immediately appeal to Henry’s softer, protective side when shit went South. It’s fucking tragic how Seymour treated her, and the way she died after FINALLY getting all the things she dreamed of but having them turn sour. She never got all the things she deserved. 😔

I was shocked when I first learned that CP was essentially in a relationship with somebody else when she was forced to marry Henry. Of course, it’s less romantic when you learn what an asshat Thomas Seymour was…

[musette22]

If you look right down the trail to his belly button, I think Dodger's name is right along there. It's just shaped oddly. :-)

Yeah, I can’t see it very well myself, but that could definitely be it! It’s gotta be somewhere haha <3

[luninosity]

Oh look...a new bo...what?! What Is This?!? A NEW DEMON BOOK??? FOR ME!?!? I'M SORRY I'M SHOUTing I'm just very excited...

A new free short story, at least! Domestic fluff! Happy magical husbands! (Here on Amazon, and here at JMS Books.) Which is...probably the last one...since the box set is coming! :D :D

It’ll be on Kindle first, and then go wide everywhere! *excited flails*

[pale-silver-comb]

The Last Dam Job...when Dubenich takes all the guys into Nate's cleared out apartment, he walks over to the clear board and tips it upright. SOMETHING is written on it. 😣 My brother messed up his shoulder in a motorcycle accident. We learned some things. 👍

Ohhhh! That board! When Dubenich gets there the writing has been scrubbed out but I believe it said "Bellington Dam" on it as we can make out a capital 'B' as Dubenich reads it. We know this because the writing was on the 2nd board Nate was talking to the team about at the beginning of the episode. He suspected the water filter was being built on that dam.

Oh my god. That sounds awful! I hope he's okay now??

[swingsetindecember]

Am I missing something? Has What-if started? I have Disney+ but have seen no evidence of the show. I'm so confused

it has not started at least in canada?