esteefee: Foreground of Rodney's dirty white sock on the table as he rubs his foot with John's disgusted expression in the background, with caption 'You can't choose your partner in this dance.' (cantchoose)
esteefee ([personal profile] esteefee) wrote2025-06-12 12:42 am

shoes!

I only own 3 pairs of shoes: my slippers, my daily sneaks, and my dress shoes. it's time for some new sneaks!

but don't come at me with shoes that curl upward at the toes unless they're a) cowboy boots; or b) khussas. and while we're at it, when are they going to bring back those sneakers with the big ass toe box? those were so comfy and fun.

shoes, people! so important.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote in [community profile] gardening2025-06-12 12:01 am

Photos: Dark Gardening

I enjoy growing dark-colored plants.  I have black flowers, bronze leaves, black fruits, all kinds of interesting things.

Walk with me ... )
helloladies: Gray icon with a horseshoe open side facing down with pink text underneath that says Adventures Elsewhere (adventures elsewhere)
Hello, Ladies ([personal profile] helloladies) wrote in [community profile] ladybusiness2025-06-11 10:55 pm

Adventures Elsewhere — May 2025

Adventures Elsewhere collects our reviews, guest posts, articles, and other content we've spread across the Internet recently! See what we've been up in our other projects. :D


Read more... )
helloladies: Gray icon with a horseshoe open side facing down with pink text underneath that says Favorite Media (favorite media)
Hello, Ladies ([personal profile] helloladies) wrote in [community profile] ladybusiness2025-06-10 10:51 pm

Our Favourite Media of May 2025

Each month, we look back over the media we loved in the previous month, from books to film to video games and more. This entry in the series was written a while ago, but we haven't posted a favorite media since then, so we're posting it now for maximum completion!


Read more... )
renay: photo of the milky way from new zealand on a clear night (Default)
Renay ([personal profile] renay) wrote in [community profile] ladybusiness2025-06-10 09:37 pm

The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott

I devoured The Witch Roads in three days. Read more... )
andrewducker: (my brain)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-06-10 08:31 pm

The advice in the UK over teachers and AI is baffling to me

Reading this article on advice to teachers in the UK about using AI, they suggest using it for things like "marking quizzes" and "generating routine letters".

And what really annoys me about this is that it's a perfect example of where simple automation could be used without the need for AI.

The precise example in the article is "Generate a letter to parents about a head lice outbreak." - which is a fairly common thing to happen in schools. So why on earth isn't there one standard letter per school, if not one standard letter for the whole country, that can be reused by absolutely everyone whenever this standard event happens? Why does this require AI to generate a new one every time, rather than just being a standard email that gets sent?

Same with marking quizzes. If children get multiple-choice quizzes regularly across all schools, and marking them uses precious teacher time, why is there not a standard piece of software, paid for once (or written once internally) which enables all children to do quizzes in a standard way, and get them marked automatically?

If we're investing a bunch of money into automating the various processes that teachers spend far too much time on, start with simple automation, which is cheap, easy, and reliable.

Also, wouldn't it be sensible to do some research into how accurately AI marks homework *before* you tell teachers to use it to do that? Here's some research from February which shows that its agreement with examiners was only 0.61 (where 1.00 would be perfect agreement). So I'm sceptical about the quality of the marking it's going to be doing...
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote in [community profile] gardening2025-06-09 11:46 pm

How to Make Comfrey Liquid Fertilizer Part 2: Leaves

Today I started making liquid fertilizer from Russian comfrey. Begin with Part 1: Jugs. With those done, I harvested leaves.

Walk with me ... )
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote in [community profile] gardening2025-06-09 10:58 pm

How to Make Comfrey Liquid Fertilizer Part 1: Jugs

Today I started making liquid fertilizer from Russian comfrey. This plant fills a lot of guild roles in permaculture including fertilizer, miner, mulcher, protector, attractor. I have been using it primarily as a bee plant that I can also slash-and-drop several times a season. I grow it under many of my trees and there's some in the prairie garden too.

There are various ways to make liquid fertilizer from comfrey. I will be testing two: 1) a small amount of comfrey leaves in a large amount of water, and 2) only comfrey leaves crammed tightly in a jug. (See Part 2: Leaves.)

Walk with me ... )
the_broken_tower: (Default)
Clockwork Tower ([personal profile] the_broken_tower) wrote in [community profile] unclutter2025-06-09 10:52 pm

Freezer

What? You mean that cookie dough from over a year ago can go bad? Even if it's frozen?


... The freezer now has a lot less cookie dough in it. RIP last spring's cookies. The aroma of freezer burn invaded my kitchen when I baked you. It was not meant to be.

- Finn Amara (he/him)
rebeccmeister: (Default)
rebeccmeister ([personal profile] rebeccmeister) wrote in [community profile] gardening2025-06-09 08:28 pm

June garden updates from Albany, NY

(updated and cross-posted from my blog)

My newest mulch pile:
Mulch Pile 2

I only recently got a wood chipper, and I am so happy to be able to mulch small branches at home now!

Lovely little flowers on the French lavender:

Blooming lavender

I have a dahlia I call the Dark Dahlia, which is behind the lavender, under some rhubarb leaves, just starting to come up. This is most exciting because I wasn't sure if I got it out of the ground in time last fall/winter.

The wine barrel tomato plants are getting much bigger, and have some flowers going:
Container tomatoes growing

Some of the ripe strawberries (while walking my cat Martha):
Strawberry harvest

Yummy strawberry-arugula salad! Needed more strawberries. Next time.

Strawberry-arugula salad
esteefee: Sun burst with caption Fair Trade san francisco, CA (fair_trade)
esteefee ([personal profile] esteefee) wrote2025-06-08 06:09 pm
Entry tags:

OCs

I just had an interesting question from a reader, who asked what actor or famous male I was thinking of when I was visualizing my OC. I don't! I mean, I do visualize people, but they are people of my own invention (I believe). I don't think they are real people, just features I come up with.

How about any writers out there? Do you choose actors or people you know? Or do you make up your OCs in your mind palace?
renay: photo of the milky way from new zealand on a clear night (Default)
Renay ([personal profile] renay) wrote in [community profile] ladybusiness2025-06-08 01:48 am

Let's Get Literate! June 2025 Hopefuls

We're counting down until mid-year!

Myy May TBR turned out to be more of a suggestion.


I read What Moves the Dead because I managed to read What Feasts at Night. And although I didn't get to The Brides of High Hill, I did reread The Empress of Salt and Fortune and grab When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain on my way to it. :D

Read more... )
andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-06-07 12:29 pm
Entry tags:

Photo cross-post


My brother Mike got me this for my birthday, and it just takes a weight off my mind being able to say "bring the steam temperature up to 95 degrees and hold it there"

(Control over oil temperature when frying eggs is also awesome.)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

andrewducker: (xkcd boomdeyada)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-06-06 08:20 pm
Entry tags:

The Sickening Has Me

I spent the day feeling bad for lacking focus, and wondering why I couldn't get anything done.
And then I slept for an hour on no notice.
And now I'm very wobbly and all of my muscles gently ache.
So I think I'm going to chalk it up as "The Plague" and hope I feel better tomorrow.