End of year meme

Dec. 23rd, 2025 07:46 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

I started introducing it this way in 2023:

The questions here sometimes feel random and sometimes aren't very relevant to me (how many one-night stands, bless; that feels like such a fossil of the height-of-LJ days when I first encountered this meme), but I do like it as a way to think a bit differently than I normally do about my life, and some things that had a big impact on me (like what a dog-hospital year it was for Gary) barely show up here. I do find myself at random points through the year noting things I do that I haven't done before, or wondering what my musical discovery might be, or whatever.

So here we go for 2025

1. What did you do in 2025 that you'd never done before?:
Wrote an extensive as the writer and basically project lead on a report at work -- never did this before, did it three times in a row this year. Met a person from the internet and ended up having sex with them the same day. (Sorry if this is tmi, there will be no more details about it.)

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?:
I didn't call it a resolution but when asked later about what I'd like to have this year that I lacked the previous one, I said

Another sexual and/or romantic partner? This feels impossible but so do the last four years' worth of things and they all happened!

Like three days after I wrote this I started talking to somoene on the social media site that's basically a kinky version of Facebook which, like regular Facebook, you can only access if you have an account and I was getting memes and events linked to by a friend until I got fed up and made an account. Six months later, I got a random message from someone who wrote a comment that I'd "liked" (as with Facebook, it tells you when people like your shit and then you can go look at their profile and all that) and in August I met him and it was fun to have a no-strings arrangement with a friend.

Will I make more for next year? I'm not sure, I think the coming year is more about keeping what I have stable: work, house, relationships, friendships, life....

+47 )

50. What are your plans for 2026?
Laat year I wrote

Try to help everyone survive it with as much comfort and joy as we can manage, especially in the U.S. but everywhere really.

And I don't think I can improve on that answer either.

In a lot of ways it's been a rough year: the quick and steep decline of human rights in the U.S. has been hard to watch and harder to be affected by so personally. Work has been so difficult. I've had such a miserable experience trying to get referred for top surgery -- in the process bringing up so much medical fatphobia that I haven't even blogged about the whole saga, I can barely even think about it without panic or tears. Even my escapist hobby of MLB has been reminding me that billionaires feel

But in other ways it has also been a good year: it was really nice to be able to provide a safe landing place for [personal profile] angelofthenorth and Mr Smith, it was nice to get through a November without anything (new) and terrible happening. Connections with the local queers have been deepened and I'm delighted that D and I are now on the small committee of people who've taken over from the two founders who have reasonably been able to step back and enjoy the thing they made as the ordinary attendees the rest of us have gotten to be the last two years.

Update on my medical woes

Dec. 23rd, 2025 07:35 pm
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker
I called them back at 7:00. Got through to someone helpful who has given me the location of a pharmacy that we're going to visit first thing tomorrow morning, who have been instructed to help us.

No idea why that didn't happen the first time!

(Belated) November 2025

Dec. 23rd, 2025 04:26 pm
muninnhuginn: (Default)
[personal profile] muninnhuginn

November 2025

Read: 
Novels:
The Green Man’s Holiday by Juliet E. McKenna (K)
 
Shorts:
 
Non-fiction
 
Watched:
  •  del Toro’s Frankenstein

In the bleak midwinter - parakeets!

Dec. 23rd, 2025 03:57 pm
oursin: hedgehog in santa hat saying bah humbug (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

Had not been seeing these lately, but over the past few days have been spotting several out of the back windows.

Which is one cheering thing among various niggles and peeves -

Yesterday I was informed that my order from Boots was being delivered, and then got two texts saying they had tried to deliver it but no-one answered. WOT. There was somebody here all the time.

Also a text that my other package (fresh yeast via eBay) had been delivered (this comes through the letterbox) - no sign of this so presume it has gone to the wrong door, and so far nobody has come round to pop it through ours.*

However, at least the Boots parcel turned up today: address label had street number blurred so reasons for mistaking, usual postperson recognised name, possibly yesterday was a seasonal worker?

Other annoyance: Kobo ereader running very sluggish - though this does not seem to apply across all books, which is weird?? Anyway, I connected to wifi in order to update the software, as possibly bearing on the matter, and dash it, it synced a whole load of things I had already downloaded and I have been obliged to clean up the duplicates.

I am, though, grateful that Christmas grocery orders have been nothing missing and no substitutions except for 1 thing which was not at all critical. Also oops, the pudding I ordered was rather smaller than I anticipated, but I feel one can have too much Xmas pud, and there are mince pies, brandy butter, etc.

In further happy news, the Lincolnshire Wolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty has been saved from oil drilling.

^ETA: somebody from 2 doors down brought it round this evening. The address on the package was perfectly clear.

A sudden withdrawal

Dec. 23rd, 2025 12:34 pm
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker
I am an idiot who forgot my blood pressure medicine when I came down to Devon to see my parents.

So this morning I went in to the local pharmacy. Who can't help me because NHS England and NHS Scotland are two different organisations. But they told me to call NHS 111 and ask them for help.

NHS 111 said "We don't have anyone available who can prescribe, call us back after 6:30PM, or talk to a local GP as "Unregistered or Temporary Residents". So we went in to my dad's GP and they said "We don't help in that situation, go talk to NHS 111, they'll help you." - which would seem to leave me in an endless loop.

Just in case, I called my GP surgery in Scotland, who said that they can't prescribe in England.

At which point, as nobody is considering this very important, I think about the only options are to either call back after 6:30 tonight or to just do without for a week. Which, having checked online, doesn't look like a great idea.

Edit: I called them back at 7:00. Got through to someone helpful who has given me the location of a pharmacy that we're going to visit first thing tomorrow morning, who have been instructed to help us.

No idea why that didn't happen the first time!
[syndicated profile] bruce_schneier_feed

Posted by Bruce Schneier

News:

The Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) announced on Thursday that Moscow was behind a cyber-attack on a Danish water utility in 2024 and a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Danish websites in the lead-up to the municipal and regional council elections in November.

The first, it said, was carried out by the pro-Russian group known as Z-Pentest and the second by NoName057(16), which has links to the Russian state.

Slashdot thread.

(no subject)

Dec. 23rd, 2025 09:56 am
oursin: hedgehog in santa hat saying bah humbug (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] cassandre!

44

Dec. 22nd, 2025 11:07 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

Thanks for the nice comments on the previous entry. They, along with just writing it out in the first place and D holding me tight (normally I am the big spoon but he did a great job at it last night!) helped me have an okay night.

D had asked me, after we turned the lights off, if there was anything I wanted to do today -- the family had no real plans beyond making the homemade vegan wellington for my birthday dinner that D's sister had suggested and I'd gotten excited about before I remembered quite how much work it was last year, oops. But D and I helped and it felt a lot less of a production this year.

Anyway, before that we had no plans and I thought it might be nice to get out of the house and see something of Birmingham. We didn't actually make it as far as the city centre but the local high street allowed D to browse charity shops while I got a long-overdue haircut (I went from the longest hair I've had in quite a while to the highest skin fade I've maybe ever had, so it feels like a dramatic difference!), and we went for a very nice birthday lunch.

My birthday present from D might still be trapped in DRM hell but he told me what it is, and The Feminist Art of Walking by his old pal Morag goes very nicely with the birthday present I've already gotten from [personal profile] angelofthenorth, of short walks/hikes around Greater Manchester. I also got a bookshop.org voucher from D's mum, which can be added to the one that comprised the other part of my birthday present from Miriam, so I have to decide what to get there too, which is so fun.

Weirdly, my birthday also marks a year since Gary died. It feels so long ago but also I can still conjure him so clearly in my memory, and there probably hasn't been a day all year that I haven't thought of him. I still miss him so much.

I've had a much better day, and I'm looking forward to being home tomorrow.

The Kraken Wakes?

Dec. 22nd, 2025 08:18 pm
oursin: Photograph of a spiny sea urchin (Spiny sea urchin)
[personal profile] oursin

2025 is ‘year of the octopus’ as record numbers spotted off England’s south coast:

The common or Mediterranean octopus, Octopus vulgaris, is native to UK waters but ordinarily in such small numbers it is rarely seen. A sudden increase in the population – a bloom – is caused by a combination of a mild winter followed by a warm breeding season in the spring. The ideal conditions meant that more of the larvae of the common octopus were likely to survive, said Slater, possibly in part fuelled by the large numbers of spider crabs that have also been recorded along the south coast in recent years.

(Oy! Ooo are you callin' octopus vulgaris?)

(We will just note that one of the novels by a certain Lady Anonyma featured Cornish wreckers and Sea Monsters.)

There were also

a record number of grey seals observed by the Cumbria Wildlife Trust, as well as record numbers of puffins on Skomer, an island off the coast of Wales famed for the birds.... the first Capellinia fustifera sea slug in Yorkshire, a 12mm mollusc that resembles a gnarly root vegetable and is usually found in the south-west. In addition, a variable blenny, a Mediterranean fish, was discovered off the coast of Sussex for the first time.

Rather creepier stuff to do with animals (or rather, humans doing creepy things with animals) a little less further westwards: New Forest residents unnerved by man leaving animal carcasses by churches

Microsoft Is Finally Killing RC4

Dec. 22nd, 2025 05:05 pm
[syndicated profile] bruce_schneier_feed

Posted by Bruce Schneier

After twenty-six years, Microsoft is finally upgrading the last remaining instance of the encryption algorithm RC4 in Windows.

of the most visible holdouts in supporting RC4 has been Microsoft. Eventually, Microsoft upgraded Active Directory to support the much more secure AES encryption standard. But by default, Windows servers have continued to respond to RC4-based authentication requests and return an RC4-based response. The RC4 fallback has been a favorite weakness hackers have exploited to compromise enterprise networks. Use of RC4 played a key role in last year’s breach of health giant Ascension. The breach caused life-threatening disruptions at 140 hospitals and put the medical records of 5.6 million patients into the hands of the attackers. US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in September called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Microsoft for “gross cybersecurity negligence,” citing the continued default support for RC4.

Last week, Microsoft said it was finally deprecating RC4 and cited its susceptibility to Kerberoasting, the form of attack, known since 2014, that was the root cause of the initial intrusion into Ascension’s network.

Fun fact: RC4 was a trade secret until I published the algorithm in the second edition of Applied Cryptography in 1995.

In shock news, hot yoga is hot

Dec. 22nd, 2025 10:45 am
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28
The hot yoga place has two levels of classes: "hotpod flow" and "nurturing flow". In January I found the nurturing one a bit too relaxing and slow, and I've been doing the free yoga classes through work pretty consistently all year, so I thought sure, I'll be fine in the standard class. I'll have to modify some of the harder positions but I'm used to that.

It was hot in the class. Not sauna hot, but I was definitely finding it harder than I'd expected based on the January classes. I took the teacher at her word about it being fine to take breaks and drink water as needed, but well before the end I just had to stop, sit, and let my heart rate come down. She checked in with me, and I assured her that I know my body and I'm not going to let myself faint, but yes it was harder than I'd expected. I've switched my classes for the next couple of days to the "nurturing flow", so we'll see how that goes.

slightly gross body stuff
My workout clothes were saturated when I finished. I thought I was sweaty after Huskies practice (two hours skating hard, trying to keep up with young men), but this was a new level. Luckily I had a hoodie and skirt to throw over the top for the bike ride home - it's a weirdly mild December week but not so mild I wanted evaporative cooling all the way. Absolutely everything went in the wash when I got home.

I emptied my 950ml water bottle in/just after the practice, and had another couple of litres of water over the course of the evening, this time with my trusty electrolyte tablets, and managed to see off the lurking dehydration headache. I'm going to make sure there's electrolytes in the in-class bottle too from tonight onward.

Culinary

Dec. 21st, 2025 08:01 pm
oursin: Frontispiece from C17th household manual (Accomplisht Lady)
[personal profile] oursin

This week's bread: a loaf of Bacheldre Rustic Country Bread Flour, quite nice, but not as nice as Dove's Farm Seedhouse.

Friday night supper: ersatz Thai fried rice with chorizo di navarra.

Saturday breakfast rolls: the ones based on James Beard's mother's raisin bread, 50/50% Marriages Golden Wholegrain (end of bag) and Strong Brown Flour, quite nice.

Today's lunch: lamb chops which I cooked thusly, except that as I had no small bottles of white wine I used red, turned out very well; served with Greek spinach rice and padron peppers.

four things make a post?

Dec. 21st, 2025 05:44 pm
summerstorm: (Default)
[personal profile] summerstorm
So I finished Silksong, and then I finished it again because I'd somehow missed a spool fragment and wanted 100% completion, and then I finished my second playthrough but with the Act II ending, and then I cursed myself and tried to beat Grandmother Silk twice and started a third playthrough, this time on the PS5 version of the game so I could get all the trophies again. I'm up to Act III with Silk Soar like 25 hours in, which is impressive, and banging my head against the Skarrsinger fight again, which is not.

The financial situation continues to be not ideal, but maybe it will improve soon? I'm also trying to get some things going -- a pixieset shop for my prints, and I want to make some battlemaps and put them up on ko-fi maybe along with those ttrpg cards I wanted to design this summer but never did. I'm doing a little better in general, in the getting things done department. Not great by any means, but better.

The puzzle I mentioned last post is taking some kind of shape, or at least some of the pieces are (the shape is a horse and a rider). I'll go get some big sheets of cardstock tomorrow so I can keep the puzzle on my old desk instead of on small sheets of cardstock where it doesn't fit.

The vertical drying rack is a lifesaver, tbh. It rained on my clothes outside last week and they were so drenched it took them five days to go back to just damp in places. This last load laundry I divided between the rack and the outdoor clothesline, and it's rained on them again. I think I might do a tiny laundry load tomorrow and then toss the outside clothes in there for a spin cycle or twenty and hang them indoors as well. I'm honestly surprised by how quickly they dry in my room, but absolutely not complaining.

Solstice

Dec. 21st, 2025 02:22 pm
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

Sunrise at 08:07
Sunset at 15:49

On this shortest day of the year, Nico and I went to Clip-n-Climb first thing, cycling there and back together through a heavily overcast but weirdly mild December day. We did a little Co-op run on the way home, and then I unpacked the hire car before returning it. I decided against buses or scooters and walked the hour or so back home, including a little diversion to collect a yoga towel from Decathlon. If all goes to plan, I will cycle to hot yoga this evening in the dark (and quite probably the rain) for the first of my "festive pass" sessions.

(I mean it about being weirdly mild: both cycling and walking I had to take my hoodie off because I was too hot.)

Technically I started the 21st of December still awake at midnight, and watching the first couple of episodes of Shoresy, a Canadian comedy TV show about ice hockey, on a friend's recommendation. (Same director/executive producer as Heated Rivalry although I didn't realise that until after I'd started watching.) Very crude, very funny.

Ice hockey, climbing, walking outdoors, yoga. Spending time with my offspring, thinking of my friends, and taking care of myself. If this is a turning day of the year, it's a good set of things to mark it.

Strictly we are not yet into the "mellandagarna", the in-between days of Christmas-to-New-Year. I'm still working until lunchtime on Wednesday, but a lot of the usual rhythms of my life and my household are paused now. School's out, hockey practice is out, everything has "holiday opening hours" listed and I'm feeling a bit unmoored. (Being ill most of the last fortnight probably hasn't helped.) My yoga pass is part of my attempt to put a little structure on the downtime.

(no subject)

Dec. 21st, 2025 12:50 pm
oursin: hedgehog in santa hat saying bah humbug (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] lannamichaels!

Posting from the abyssal depths

Dec. 21st, 2025 10:59 am
andrewducker: (livejournal blackout)
[personal profile] andrewducker
7 days ago was our earliest sunset (15:37)
7 days from now is our latest sunrise (08:44)
Today is our shortest day (6:57:37)

I am looking forward to the return of the light.

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