Where'd the time go
Mar. 9th, 2026 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cmk418Immersed myself in reading a bunch of Starfleet Academy fanfics and lost the last hour and a half.
Watched the latest episode of "Paradise" tonight. This season is so disjointed. They're formatting it to cover just one part of the story in an episode which is a choice, but I'd rather they at least touched base with the rest of the cast just so we know what's going on with them. And I can only take so much of certain characters so if we're waiting for a full episode devoted to them, it's going to be no fun.
Hockey game with Dad tomorrow night. They'll have a tribute video for the Captain (who has technically only been gone since Friday.) I'll need to grab a handful of Kleenex to take along.
Still haven't heard anything about choir, so I guess they still may be deciding.
That's it for now. See you all tomorrow!
Watched the latest episode of "Paradise" tonight. This season is so disjointed. They're formatting it to cover just one part of the story in an episode which is a choice, but I'd rather they at least touched base with the rest of the cast just so we know what's going on with them. And I can only take so much of certain characters so if we're waiting for a full episode devoted to them, it's going to be no fun.
Hockey game with Dad tomorrow night. They'll have a tribute video for the Captain (who has technically only been gone since Friday.) I'll need to grab a handful of Kleenex to take along.
Still haven't heard anything about choir, so I guess they still may be deciding.
That's it for now. See you all tomorrow!
The List of Shame
Mar. 9th, 2026 04:22 am![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
denise posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_advocacyPeople frequently ask us about whether their specific US state is trying to enact a social media age verification law so they can call their state representatives and yell at them about it! I have had "build a system that will let me easily update this without having to do so manually, categorizing these bills by status, what problems they have, and what we'd do about them if they pass" on my want-to-do list for a really long time, but until I can, here's the current list of bills I know about.
This (very long, sigh) list is accurate to the best of my knowledge as of 8 March 2026, but it may not include every bill that's been introduced in every state. (I've used a few different lists plus my own "searching until I got too depressed to continue" to assemble it, excluding laws I think have absolutely no chance of passing but including laws where I think there's still even a slight chance.) If you know of one that isn't on the list, please let me know in the comments!
These are state laws only. I'm concentrating on those because you can find lists of bad federal bills more easily, but all the lists of state bills I know of are industry-gated or limited-distribution. If you don't have a preferred source for finding out about bad federal legislation about the internet, Bad Internet Bills (from Fight for the Future) and the EFF Action Center are a great place to start!
This list is only counting social media bills; I am not including bills that don't apply to us because they're modeled on the app store/OS age signal model legislation or bills that deal with age verification for other services like chatbots or "AI companions", because I'd go completely off the rails and resort to just screaming incoherently when the list passed a hundred items. I will try to update this at least quarterly, or whenever the Magic 8 Ball says there's a rapidly moving bill that you need to yell at people about.
( The Current Hall of Shame )
This (very long, sigh) list is accurate to the best of my knowledge as of 8 March 2026, but it may not include every bill that's been introduced in every state. (I've used a few different lists plus my own "searching until I got too depressed to continue" to assemble it, excluding laws I think have absolutely no chance of passing but including laws where I think there's still even a slight chance.) If you know of one that isn't on the list, please let me know in the comments!
These are state laws only. I'm concentrating on those because you can find lists of bad federal bills more easily, but all the lists of state bills I know of are industry-gated or limited-distribution. If you don't have a preferred source for finding out about bad federal legislation about the internet, Bad Internet Bills (from Fight for the Future) and the EFF Action Center are a great place to start!
This list is only counting social media bills; I am not including bills that don't apply to us because they're modeled on the app store/OS age signal model legislation or bills that deal with age verification for other services like chatbots or "AI companions", because I'd go completely off the rails and resort to just screaming incoherently when the list passed a hundred items. I will try to update this at least quarterly, or whenever the Magic 8 Ball says there's a rapidly moving bill that you need to yell at people about.
( The Current Hall of Shame )
changed DW layout again
Mar. 9th, 2026 12:02 amarchersangelthis new one is Dreamer for Dusty Foot by timeasmymeasure. it took a bit to find a layout and colors (the main color & the links & stuff) that i like.
long ago when i found a layout color/theme that i liked, i would change the link colors and stuff. but the older i get, the less i want to bother with stuff like that.
remembered to center the header image and select "don't tile" this time.
long ago when i found a layout color/theme that i liked, i would change the link colors and stuff. but the older i get, the less i want to bother with stuff like that.
remembered to center the header image and select "don't tile" this time.
Times Have Changed
Mar. 8th, 2026 08:22 pmcmk418Happy International Women's Day to all who celebrate. I was thinking about my journey of feminism and how even not so long ago (within the last 10 years), I was still reluctant to call myself a feminist. And in the early 2000s, I would swear up and down that I would never vote for a woman to be President of the United States. (I hadn't had the Donald Trump experience at that point, so it was easy for me to believe that.) But the older I've gotten, the more progressive I've become and the less apt I am to see things the way I saw them previously. Feminism is no longer a label I shun. It's one I embrace. And the more I hear from men and men's opinions, the more I want to see what women could do if they ran the world. That's not to say there aren't women who are assholes and racists and homophobes and predators, but if we're looking for a gentler world, I'm not sure men in charge is the answer.
We had an absolutely beautiful day today. I went to the bookstore and picked up two books- "Play You For It" by Samantha Saldiver, a Sapphic basketball romance between a coach and a journalist, and "Vampires of El Norte" by Isabel Canas, which was recommended during the Snowflake Challenge a couple of years ago (because woman cannot live on Sapphic romance novels alone). And then I sat outside for a half an hour and read the first chapters of both books. It was lovely.
That's all I've got for now. See you tomorrow!
We had an absolutely beautiful day today. I went to the bookstore and picked up two books- "Play You For It" by Samantha Saldiver, a Sapphic basketball romance between a coach and a journalist, and "Vampires of El Norte" by Isabel Canas, which was recommended during the Snowflake Challenge a couple of years ago (because woman cannot live on Sapphic romance novels alone). And then I sat outside for a half an hour and read the first chapters of both books. It was lovely.
That's all I've got for now. See you tomorrow!
Tudor: Passion. Manipulation. Murder. by Leanda de Lisle
Mar. 8th, 2026 12:33 amarchersangelthe rest of the title; The Story of England s Most Notorious Royal Family
from amazon;
this is a very interesting book that covers not only the major tudor figures (henry VIII, mary I, elizabeth I), but minor family members & touches on some of the other royals (henry VI, edward IV, some french kings) that were around during various times.
of course there is a part about richard III & the fate of edward V and his brother richard, the author doesn't come right out and say who might be responsible. although, i got the feeling she was hinting that friends/followers of richard III were responsible. she said that henry VII was only guilty of not investigating what happened to them. the problem was if he proved they were killed, most likely a cult of worship would have focused on them. like with henry VI & similarly if richard III had said they had died of sickness, or depression, or that friends/followers of the future henry VII killed them there would've been a a cult of worship then.
hidden in the author's notes was that the richard IIIdefense society paid for a forensic psychology study of richard III and they found that he supposedly had a strong sense of right and wrong and most likely had edward V and his brother richard hidden away for their own safety.
i do not believe it.
1. i can not imagine that kind of thing staying secret very long at the time.
2. their mother, elizabeth woodville, was told they were dead.
3. the skeletons of two boys about the ages the princes were when they died were discovered buried at the bottom of a staircase in the tower which was mentioned by someone who claimed they knew what happened to them.
from amazon;
The Tudor canon typically starts with the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, before speeding on to Henry VIII and the Reformation. But this leaves out the family's obscure Welsh origins, the ordinary man known as Owen Tudor who would fall (literally) into a Queen's lap and later her bed. It passes by the courage of Margaret Beaufort, the pregnant thirteen-year-old girl who would help found the Tudor dynasty, and the childhood and painful exile of her son, the future Henry VII. It ignores the fact that the Tudors were shaped by their past, those parts they wished to remember and those they wished to forget.
this is a very interesting book that covers not only the major tudor figures (henry VIII, mary I, elizabeth I), but minor family members & touches on some of the other royals (henry VI, edward IV, some french kings) that were around during various times.
of course there is a part about richard III & the fate of edward V and his brother richard, the author doesn't come right out and say who might be responsible. although, i got the feeling she was hinting that friends/followers of richard III were responsible. she said that henry VII was only guilty of not investigating what happened to them. the problem was if he proved they were killed, most likely a cult of worship would have focused on them. like with henry VI & similarly if richard III had said they had died of sickness, or depression, or that friends/followers of the future henry VII killed them there would've been a a cult of worship then.
hidden in the author's notes was that the richard III
i do not believe it.
1. i can not imagine that kind of thing staying secret very long at the time.
2. their mother, elizabeth woodville, was told they were dead.
3. the skeletons of two boys about the ages the princes were when they died were discovered buried at the bottom of a staircase in the tower which was mentioned by someone who claimed they knew what happened to them.
this again
Mar. 7th, 2026 12:03 amarchersangelthe moving the clocks one hour ahead thing is happening saturday night/early sunday.
my usual thing about it; most electronics will do it automatically, but stuff like stoves & microwaves will not. unless you have some super fancy, connected to the internet, kind of thing.
some forums and bboards have something in time setting about DST in effect. so look at where you post to see if they do. for example, DW doesn't have that. they have pick your time zone & if you want the time display in 12 hour (am/pm) or 24 hour.
my usual thing about it; most electronics will do it automatically, but stuff like stoves & microwaves will not. unless you have some super fancy, connected to the internet, kind of thing.
some forums and bboards have something in time setting about DST in effect. so look at where you post to see if they do. for example, DW doesn't have that. they have pick your time zone & if you want the time display in 12 hour (am/pm) or 24 hour.
some movies
Mar. 6th, 2026 09:04 pmsnickficDrowning by Numbers (1988). A woman, her daught, and her niece are all named Cissie, drown their husbands, and depend on the local coroner Madgett (Bernard Hill) to cover up their crimes.
This is a surrealist late-80s comedy meditating on death and also games and numbers of various kinds, which is to say it feels very much of a piece with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, except for having no Shakespeare and being more focused on female characters. It's all nonsense; nobody is really a real person here, and that's fine. It's also pretty horny in various ways, and in fact Madgett proposes to each of the Cissies in turn. You kind of want him to succeed with one or possibly all of them.
If you want a sense of what you're in for with this movie, Madgett's introduction gives you a pretty good one.
--
The Bride! (2026). Maggie Gyllenhaal directs this riff on the Frankenstein mythos, this time a sometime-musical Bonnie and Clyde story about Frankenstein's creature Frank (Christian Bale), still alive in the 1930s, and the bride (Jessie Buckley) that he talks a mad scientist into "reinvigorating" for him. The dead woman thus invigorated was a mobster's call girl, but she doesn't remember any of that anymore. Sometimes Mary Shelley talks to her for some reason.
If you get the sense from this description that this movie has a lot going on, you are correct. I would say this movie is less than the sum of its parts, but I really enjoy several of those parts. Buckley is fantastic, and Annette Bening as Doctor Euphronius is delightful. The big dance number is fun. The movie has a lot of style and is sometimes cheekily anachronistic.
The various pieces don't ever really cohere; there are too many of them. And some of the pieces I enjoyed less, like the Overboard-style plot where our revived gal thinks she's still alive and was already married to Frank before her "accident." The subplot of her being occasionally literally possessed by Mary Shelley was just baffling to me. I get that it was supposed to be thematic, but: why. But, the movie tackles all its various tones and themes with a lot of energy and verve, and overall I found a lot to enjoy.
--
Send Help (2026). A frumpy woman who dreams of competing on Survivor crashlands on an island with her horrible boss.
This is a psychological thriller by Sam Raimi, and it took me a long time to go see it because ~suspense movies about people chasing each other around trying to kill each other aren't usually my thing. (See also: every home invasion movie except You're Next.) But! We don't really get that until the end, and in the meantime, Rachel McAdams is delightful as Linda Little, who's competent and helpful to a fault until she's finally pushed too far. I love how much of a glow-up Linda gets the longer they stay on the island. There were also some late developments that I really liked.
It's not breaking any new ground, but it's fun and well-executed. If you support women's wrongs(tm), I think you'll enjoy this.
This is a surrealist late-80s comedy meditating on death and also games and numbers of various kinds, which is to say it feels very much of a piece with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, except for having no Shakespeare and being more focused on female characters. It's all nonsense; nobody is really a real person here, and that's fine. It's also pretty horny in various ways, and in fact Madgett proposes to each of the Cissies in turn. You kind of want him to succeed with one or possibly all of them.
If you want a sense of what you're in for with this movie, Madgett's introduction gives you a pretty good one.
--
The Bride! (2026). Maggie Gyllenhaal directs this riff on the Frankenstein mythos, this time a sometime-musical Bonnie and Clyde story about Frankenstein's creature Frank (Christian Bale), still alive in the 1930s, and the bride (Jessie Buckley) that he talks a mad scientist into "reinvigorating" for him. The dead woman thus invigorated was a mobster's call girl, but she doesn't remember any of that anymore. Sometimes Mary Shelley talks to her for some reason.
If you get the sense from this description that this movie has a lot going on, you are correct. I would say this movie is less than the sum of its parts, but I really enjoy several of those parts. Buckley is fantastic, and Annette Bening as Doctor Euphronius is delightful. The big dance number is fun. The movie has a lot of style and is sometimes cheekily anachronistic.
The various pieces don't ever really cohere; there are too many of them. And some of the pieces I enjoyed less, like the Overboard-style plot where our revived gal thinks she's still alive and was already married to Frank before her "accident." The subplot of her being occasionally literally possessed by Mary Shelley was just baffling to me. I get that it was supposed to be thematic, but: why. But, the movie tackles all its various tones and themes with a lot of energy and verve, and overall I found a lot to enjoy.
--
Send Help (2026). A frumpy woman who dreams of competing on Survivor crashlands on an island with her horrible boss.
This is a psychological thriller by Sam Raimi, and it took me a long time to go see it because ~suspense movies about people chasing each other around trying to kill each other aren't usually my thing. (See also: every home invasion movie except You're Next.) But! We don't really get that until the end, and in the meantime, Rachel McAdams is delightful as Linda Little, who's competent and helpful to a fault until she's finally pushed too far. I love how much of a glow-up Linda gets the longer they stay on the island. There were also some late developments that I really liked.
It's not breaking any new ground, but it's fun and well-executed. If you support women's wrongs(tm), I think you'll enjoy this.
handy Dreamwidth tricks
Mar. 6th, 2026 07:37 pmsnickficIn one place that's easy for me to find.
- via elasticella: If you'd like to filter by multiple tags, add them via comma with ?mode=all at the end. For example, all my recs posts also tagged with Oasis: https://snickfic.dreamwidth.org/tag/fandom:+oasis,entry:+recs?mode=all
- If you're a paid user, DW allows you to filter out specific tags by other users (for example, my "topic: politics" tag). It's just not easy to find. First you need to make an access filter and put the person on that filter, and then once they are in the filter, click on their name and all their tags will pop up.
One suggestion would be to make a filter with your entire circle in it, and then just take out the tags you don't want. Then that could be your default view of your circle.
🎨 Freebie Friday — Fannish March Calendar (Willow, Riley)
Mar. 6th, 2026 07:46 pmveronyxk84
Welcome to “Freebie Friday”, my new series of (semi) recurring posts where I plan to offer as many graphic freebies as possible.
Here is double version of a fannish March calendar featuring Willow (BtVS) and Riley (BtVS) with quotes.
Click on the previews for the full size and download/save options
Edited from a free Canva template by Caeleste. Texts and Polaroid pic added with GIMP 3.0.
For personal use only. Do NOT sell or redistribute; linking back to this post is always okay.
See you next month with another character!
friday 5; winter
Mar. 6th, 2026 01:51 amarchersangelThese questions were suggested by dray .
1. Do you know of any other words for snow? What's your favourite and why?
well, flurry refers a certain way snow blows around. so that probably does not count.
2. What's your ideal temperature range for winter?
it would be cold, but not too cold. mid to high 30s(f) is fine. but when you get to freezing 32(f) it is too cold.
3. Favourite winter activity? What about it makes it your favourite?
staying indoors. which is also my favorite summer activity.
4. What are three things you can't do without when winter arrives?
warmth, a heavy coat & gloves.
5. Do you have favourite winter holiday activities?
i do not not have any.
other answers over here.
dray .1. Do you know of any other words for snow? What's your favourite and why?
well, flurry refers a certain way snow blows around. so that probably does not count.
2. What's your ideal temperature range for winter?
it would be cold, but not too cold. mid to high 30s(f) is fine. but when you get to freezing 32(f) it is too cold.
3. Favourite winter activity? What about it makes it your favourite?
staying indoors. which is also my favorite summer activity.
4. What are three things you can't do without when winter arrives?
warmth, a heavy coat & gloves.
5. Do you have favourite winter holiday activities?
i do not not have any.
other answers over here.
Yawn
Mar. 5th, 2026 09:01 pmcmk418Was up late watching hockey last night so this will be quick.
Watched "Starfleet Academy" tonight. This was mostly a setup episode and had its moments, but was fairly standard compared to some of the others we've seen. The bonding ceremony in the beginning was nice. Can't believe that the season is ending next week. I like the 10 episode seasons, but I think they should accelerate the time between them, so we're not waiting forever to find out what happens next. We grew up on 22-episode seasons with reruns in the summer (at least I did) and you could do a one-off, one-on thing for series now and still call them seasons 1 and 2. It's not like there's DVD revenue that's going to be generated because not many people are buying physical media when they can stream it. Turning us into a binge-watching society and then making us wait a year or longer between seasons is crazy. /end rant
So far, the Blues have made zero successful trades because no one wants to waive their NTC to go to beautiful Buffalo. Maybe tomorrow.
That's it for now. See you all tomorrow!
Watched "Starfleet Academy" tonight. This was mostly a setup episode and had its moments, but was fairly standard compared to some of the others we've seen. The bonding ceremony in the beginning was nice. Can't believe that the season is ending next week. I like the 10 episode seasons, but I think they should accelerate the time between them, so we're not waiting forever to find out what happens next. We grew up on 22-episode seasons with reruns in the summer (at least I did) and you could do a one-off, one-on thing for series now and still call them seasons 1 and 2. It's not like there's DVD revenue that's going to be generated because not many people are buying physical media when they can stream it. Turning us into a binge-watching society and then making us wait a year or longer between seasons is crazy. /end rant
So far, the Blues have made zero successful trades because no one wants to waive their NTC to go to beautiful Buffalo. Maybe tomorrow.
That's it for now. See you all tomorrow!
Fannish 50 - A NHL Trade Deadline Primer
Mar. 4th, 2026 08:38 pmcmk418This is one of the most exciting and also one of the most frustrating times of year for NHL fans. The trade deadline is 3pm EST on Friday and things are starting to ramp up. There are rumors everywhere and some moves are being made. Some years there's nothing until the final day and some years there are significant trades that happen in the days ahead and then crickets on the deadline day.
( More details behind the cut )
( More details behind the cut )
Secrets Post #951
Mar. 6th, 2026 05:00 pmfrancinefrenski posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
officialsimsecret WARNINGS -> Sim NSFW -> .gif -> Sims marketplace |
001.
( + 23 more )
>NOTICES & REMINDERS:
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Submission Post #952
Mar. 6th, 2026 05:00 pmfrancinefrenski posting in officialsimsecret1) Comments are screened, but please submit secrets anonymously.
2) Host your images at an image sharing website such as postimages.org. If it goes against their TOS you can host it elsewhere. Please provide the URL to the actual picture, nothing else. You don't need to code it (and DreamWidth doesn't use BB/forum code, so stop it). Just paste the "Direct link for layouts" into the comment box. If you want an image that lasts forever [for whatever reason], you can upload it to Tumblr and then delete it after you grab the image link, as that will remain active forever.
3) WCIF and help requests won't be posted. You can use Google instead.
4) Secrets must be somehow related to The Sims games. Whether it's a gameplay secret or a non-game secret that uses the game to illustrate it. To count as sims-related, the secret must contain either a reference to the games or related materials OR a picture from the games, with the exception of usernames and profile/banner images, etc. Vague references to "content" or "story" are only accepted if the mods can recognize that it is in fact sims-related.
5) Further rules/recommendations are normally found listed on the community info page.
6) Please post a DIRECT LINK TO YOUR IMAGE, not a link to the page on the hosting site. It should end in .png, .jpg, .gif etc. If you do not post a DIRECT LINK, your secret will not be posted.
Please note: Imgbb.com is frequently breaking images, we no longer recommend using them because the image is often broken by the time Friday comes around.
2) Host your images at an image sharing website such as postimages.org. If it goes against their TOS you can host it elsewhere. Please provide the URL to the actual picture, nothing else. You don't need to code it (and DreamWidth doesn't use BB/forum code, so stop it). Just paste the "Direct link for layouts" into the comment box. If you want an image that lasts forever [for whatever reason], you can upload it to Tumblr and then delete it after you grab the image link, as that will remain active forever.
3) WCIF and help requests won't be posted. You can use Google instead.
4) Secrets must be somehow related to The Sims games. Whether it's a gameplay secret or a non-game secret that uses the game to illustrate it. To count as sims-related, the secret must contain either a reference to the games or related materials OR a picture from the games, with the exception of usernames and profile/banner images, etc. Vague references to "content" or "story" are only accepted if the mods can recognize that it is in fact sims-related.
5) Further rules/recommendations are normally found listed on the community info page.
6) Please post a DIRECT LINK TO YOUR IMAGE, not a link to the page on the hosting site. It should end in .png, .jpg, .gif etc. If you do not post a DIRECT LINK, your secret will not be posted.
Please note: Imgbb.com is frequently breaking images, we no longer recommend using them because the image is often broken by the time Friday comes around.
February Books, 2026
Mar. 4th, 2026 11:00 amamado1Total: 12 books
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens;
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe;
- The Maids by Jean Genet;
- Deathwatch by Jean Genet;
- In Memoriam by Alice Winn;
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov;
- Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy;
- The Pumpkin Spice Cafe by Laurie Gilmore;
- The Catholic by David Plante;
- The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage;
- Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx;
- Translations by Brian Friel.
Deeply, deeply liked most of these. Unusually hard to pick a favorite for this month because almost all of them were excellent. I'll just highlight the exceptions, and the ones I feel are worth raving about.
( Thoughts )
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens;
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe;
- The Maids by Jean Genet;
- Deathwatch by Jean Genet;
- In Memoriam by Alice Winn;
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov;
- Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy;
- The Pumpkin Spice Cafe by Laurie Gilmore;
- The Catholic by David Plante;
- The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage;
- Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx;
- Translations by Brian Friel.
Deeply, deeply liked most of these. Unusually hard to pick a favorite for this month because almost all of them were excellent. I'll just highlight the exceptions, and the ones I feel are worth raving about.
( Thoughts )