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yhlee
shadowkatgwyn“Exitus!” Steve shouted, slamming his hand against the door where the mandala should have been, and suddenly he was on the chair in his room, gasping. In this world.
Steve lowered the glass to his lap and looked up at Shuri. His heart was beating way too hard and fast. “You were right,” he said, sitting up. “He’s glitching. I don’t know if I can get him out.”
oursinNorfolk's first capybara café opening in Toftwood, Dereham
That's right. An area which has had FORM for escaping invasive large semi-aquatic mammals: see this article by a guy who dealt with the coypu menace in the Broads.
Animal rights and protection orgs are already up in arms:
FOUR PAWS strongly opposes the keeping of wild or non-domesticated animals, such as capybaras, in settings where their complex welfare needs cannot be properly met.
Freedom for Animals has united with our colleagues at Born Free Foundation, Animal Aid, OneKind, World Animal Protection, and RSPCA to strongly urge the operators, and the local authority, to halt these plans before they get underway.
RSPCA criticises new ‘capybara cafes’
Apparently there is a whole thing of cafes where you can embrace cuddly animals in Asia: Cuddling capybaras and ogling otters: the problem with animal cafes in Asia: A boom in places offering petting sessions is linked to a rise in the illegal movement of exotic and endangered species, say experts:
Capybaras breed rapidly, can withstand a wide range of temperatures, and have a flexible diet of grasses and aquatic plants. “There is a high risk for them to be invasive,” Congdon says.
I will cop to have looked rather wistfully at a place in Australia which offered encounters with WOMBATTS, but a) that was in their native land and b) it looked like this was a sanctuary and they were rescue wombies, and thus one would be supporting the mission. (While interacting with ADORABLE WOMBATTS.)
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And because tradition: this is one that I haven't iterated overmuch:
selenak
yourlibrarian![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tv_talk, I couldn't help comparing 2 shows that are forever tied together for me because of a friend, now gone from us, who I watched them with. ancing with the Stars which had its 20 year anniversary this month, has been on so long it had its own In Memoriam segment. (Charo and Wayne Newton though, in the audience, still with us). It was a great show, starting with an excellent opening number. Funnily enough, I turned to my partner and commented on how well choreographed it was, only to find out a minute later that it had been done by Derek Hough. Want to leave a Kudos?
oursinWhat I read
After Hours at Dooryard Books was really good - set in 1968 in a used bookstore in Greenwich Village - this was so not a Summer of Love - but lots of Unhistoric Acts - also I really liked that what I feared was going to be one of those three-quarter way through Exposure of Dark Thing/Arising of Unexpected Crisis in Relationship actually didn't go angst angst angst wo wo wo.
Slightly Foxed #88: 'Pure Magic': pretty good selection, though rather irked by the guy fanboying over Room at the Top and all he can say about the sexism side of things is that the protag's behaviour to women 'may be less than admirable but he is not a cad'. O RLY. What do you call putting the local rich guy's daughter in the club and then chucking your older woman mistress, who dies horribly in a car accident?
Robert Rodi, Fag Hag (1992) - of its period perhaps. I think there may be works of his I remember more fondly than this one? Don't really recommend.
Dick Francis, Hot Money (1987): this is one in which I was waiting for the narrator to get, as per usual for a DF protag, nastily done over, probably by one of his siblings or in-laws in this convoluted tale of seething envies within the family of a much-married tycoon. He did get blown up but that was not personal and so did his father. No actually woodsheds but there was a glasshouse and various other nooks and crannies to see something nasty in.
On the go
Back to Lanny Budd - O Shepherd, Speak! (#10) (1949) - Lanny as ever finds himself where it's happening in the final stages of WW2 - have got to the aftermath of the war, and thinking about peace. Quite a way to go.
Up next
No idea.
alias_sqbrmusesfool
shadowkatyhlee
oursinWe perceive that there does not appear to be any gender-confusion, or relationships with military helmets, connected with this particular tortoise, or maybe no-one noticed: Gramma the Galápagos tortoise, oldest resident of San Diego Zoo, dies at about 141. Not quite old enough to have met that there Charles Darwin, then.
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Reversal of Fates: Access Through Photographs can be a Counterbalance
Ongoing digitization and cataloging work not only serves the interests of scholars and manuscript communities—it also creates crucial, publicly-accessible provenance records that provide an increasingly robust bulwark against manuscript theft and trafficking.
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Thousands of rare American recordings — some 100 years old — go online for all to enjoy:
“A lot of that music from that era, the record companies did not keep backups. They were all destroyed, almost all. And it’s all up to the record collectors. They’re the ones who kind of saved the music from that era,”
....
Superior to a random recording uploaded to YouTube with no accompanying information, the database includes things like where the song was recorded and when, as well as lists of musicians and composers who worked on the songs.
I think I may have mentioned at some time the phenomenon of the 'monkey walk': Before Tinder, there was the Monkey Parade… . Though some recent works read for review incline me to think that one reason for the decline not mentioned in that piece was the rise of the coffee-bar - indoors in the warm with a juke-box, and the site of massive 50s moral panic around The Young.
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Statue to 'remarkable' woman who escaped slavery:
A statue to a "remarkable and brave" woman who fled slavery and torture in the US has been unveiled in the fishing town in northern England where she found freedom.
Mary Ann Macham spent weeks hiding in woods in Virginia before stowing away on a ship, eventually arriving in North Shields in the early 1830s.
She was taken in by a Quaker family, married a local man and remained in the town until she died aged 91.
fleetfoxesyhlee
shadowkatumadoshioursinLast week was definitely a trifecta of Electrical Stuff.
Okay, I had been suspecting for some time that the fan heater in the front room was an ex-fan heater, and plugging it into a different socket (rather than an extension cord) confirmed this.
Have now ordered a convection heater (Which Best Buy), allegedly arriving tomorrow.
Last Tuesday around 6 am there was a power cut - it only lasted about 90 minutes, but involved a certain amount of resetting appliances which had become confused - also UKPowerNet only finally alerted me about this event by text several hours after things were back to more or less normal.
What I had not expected and accounted for in resetting things was that my clock alarm had decided that the time my alarm was set for was 6 am, so I got a rude awakening the following morning.
The other thing - and this was positively sinister - was that my electric toothbrush suddenly started buzzing away all by itself on the bathroom window ledge and was very very reluctant to be switched off. How is it not scary when this sort of thing happens?
Anyway, next morning it was apathetic about being switched on and is now an ex-toothbrush. A new one - not a top Which Best Buy as those are hugely expensive, but about third on the list which is on promotion at various outlets - currently expected. I have a backup but would rather this had not happened the week I am due for a trip to the dental hygienist.
yhlee - emotional support fibershadowkat - Happy US Thanksgiving to those who celebrate.gwyn - Fic: Final chapter of Reverieavrelia - (no subject)oursin - You'd have thought they'd have recalled the coypu issue....selenak - Pluribus 1.05yourlibrarian - The Good and the Could Be Betteroursin - Wednesday is annoyed that a seminar, booked as being online, turned out to be in-person onlyoursin - (no subject)alias_sqbr - Curious what the scam is with a real estate "letter" we gotmusesfool - then i met you at the station in Ronkonkomashadowkat - Tuesday is busy appreciating and being grateful for the little things...yhlee - emotional support codingoursin - Oddmentsfleetfoxes - American Christofascism in Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series.oursin - (no subject)yhlee - emotional support spinningshadowkat - Monday is tired, but got through yet another doctor appointmentumadoshi - Discombobulation and dreamstuffoursin - Electrical shocksbranchandroot