Economics

May. 15th, 2025 11:22 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
US reportedly plans to slash bank rules imposed to prevent 2008-style crash

The move follows heavy lobbying by the banking industry, with lenders such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs having long complained that competition and lending have been hindered by burdensome rules governing the assets they must hold versus their liabilities.

Regulators are expected to put forward the proposals this summer, aimed at cutting the supplementary leverage ratio that requires big banks to hold high-quality capital against risky assets including loans and derivatives, according to the Financial Times, which cited unnamed sources.



There is a limit to how much you can do to defend yourself against other people's poor life choices. Every time the 1% go for a joyride and crash the economy, the 99% pay the price. But you can choose where to store your funds, and that can make a huge difference. If you put your money into a credit union instead of a conventional bank, then there is much less tendency toward risky ventures because the officers are elected from among the members who keep their money in the credit union. Find a credit union near you.

Fossils

May. 15th, 2025 11:14 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Fossil tracks show reptiles appeared on Earth up to 40 million years earlier

The origin of reptiles on Earth has been shown to be up to 40 million years earlier than previously thought -- thanks to evidence discovered at an Australian fossil site that represents a critical time period. Scientists have identified fossilized tracks of an amniote with clawed feet -- most probably a reptile -- from the Carboniferous period, about 350 million years ago.


So exciting!  :D
florianschild: Marilyn Monroe seated in front of a black backdrop (Default)
[personal profile] florianschild
Challenge:

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.

I'm trying to finish this before the end of Three Weeks for Dreamwidth so we're going for 5 books a day for four days.

Books sixteen through twenty:
Book cover of Hate Inc. by Matt Taibbi Book cover of Halfway Human by Carolyn Ives Gilman Book cover of Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie Book cover of Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez Book Cover of Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell


The color group is a little more disjointed today, but each cover has a yellow element! I love how every group had some color cohesion. :D

Previous - Part 3
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
[personal profile] tamaranth
2025/073: Sorcery and Small Magics — Maiga Doocy
“How can I stop doing something that I don’t even know I’m doing in the first place? It’s not like I’m sabotaging myself on purpose. The feelings are just there.” [p. 281]

M/M romantic fantasy. Leovander Loveage is brilliant at small magics, his cantrips and charms executed with musical accompaniment. Sadly, Leo's larger spells -- his Grandmagic -- never work out right. He's a student at the Fount, an institution where scrivers (like Leo) write the spells, and are paired with casters who execute them. Unfortunately, in their final year, Leo is not paired with his best friend Agnes but instead with his nemesis Sebastian GrimmRead more... )

Photos: Savanna and Prairie Garden

May. 14th, 2025 11:40 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
These pictures are from the savanna and prairie garden.

Walk with me ... )

Photos: House Yard and South Lot

May. 14th, 2025 10:56 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today I took some pictures around the yard.  These are from the house yard and south lot.

Walk with me ... )
ysabetwordsmith: (Fly Free)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Based on an audience poll, this is the free epic for the May 6, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl making its $200 goal. It is spillover from the April 1, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from [personal profile] see_also_friend. It also fills the "Coastal Style" square in my 4-1-25 card for the Aesthetics Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Peculiar Obligations.

Read more... )

What I'm Doing Wednesday

May. 14th, 2025 06:19 pm
sage: mature monstera deliciosa leaves on a black background (Monstera)
[personal profile] sage
books
Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom by Rick Hanson, Richard Mendius, Daniel J. Siegel. 2009, I think. Really not as sciency as I was hoping for. :(

Chakras, the Vagus Nerve, and Your Soul: Journeying to Wellness Through Subtle Energy and Your Nervous System by C.J. Llewelyn, M.Ed, LPC. I was expecting something bordering on the woo-woo, based on the title. But it's actually a therapist's book on treating clients with trauma in a somatic-informed way. Which is very cool and relevant to my interests! (The last 20% kind of went into soul-stuff, but the rest was very rooted in science.)

The Neuroscience of Yoga and Meditation by Brittany Fair, Bruce Hogarth (Illustrator). This is so cool. All the nitty-gritty science of what yoga and meditation do to the brain. Recommended.

currently reading: The Hidden Story of the Mahabharata: With Inner Meanings from Paramhansa Yogananda by Nayaswami Gyandev. I've read parts of the Mahabharata, inc all of the Bhagavad-Gita, but never the whole thing and never with annotations. So far, it's a deeply satisfying read.

dirt )

healthcrap, Pilates, yoga, yoga nidra )

#resist
May 20 to 26: Walmart Boycott 2
June 1: Pride LGBTQ Protest
June 3 to 9: Target Boycott
June 14: Flag Day & No King's Day (Trump's Birthday) Protest
June 19: Juneteenth Protest
June 27: Stonewall Anniversary Protest
June 24 to 30: McDonald’s Boycott
July 4: Independence Day Boycott

I hope all of y'all are doing well! <333
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

According to this, and a new book I maybe have to read now, a gay pioneer in the UK was blind.

In 1960, seven years before the law in the UK changed to permit sex between men, he had written to the national press declaring himself to be gay. Roger believed that the only way to change public opinion about homosexuals was for them to take control of the gay rights movement – and this required them to unashamedly identify themselves on the national stage. But nobody else had been willing to do it.

It's because of his blindness that this person had to come in to his life: an Oxford student, also gay, who could be trusted to read his papers and write and generally be a kind of personal assistant.

To gay when it was illegal, and then to be blind, required a lot of access intimacy when everything was still on paper.

The article ends:

In the years since, it has often led me to wonder how many other quiet revolutionaries live among us, ready to share their stories, if only we knock on their doors.

So many. I'm sure of it.

How to Do Anything in 6 Steps

May. 14th, 2025 01:57 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
From this old post that was referenced by [personal profile] rebeccmeister:

How to do anything in 6 steps
1. I listen (i.e., find out what the project is to be)
2. I think about it (make plans)
3. I get ready (gather tools and materials)
4. I do it!
5. I clean up
6. I celebrate



That's a very useful system that applies to most projects.

3 Weeks - 15

May. 14th, 2025 11:28 am
esteefee: Kono staring us down through a sniper scope. (kono)
[personal profile] esteefee


so rewatching Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, what a touching moment when Holga dies heroically having saved their world from the scourge of the creepy tattooification of the Thay -- me, I'm only for consensual tattooing -- but when Edgin is having his big moment! of realizing he could, I dunno, gee, bring his best goddamn friend in the whole wide world back to life, why is the only motivation he sees in his mind's eye touching scenes of Holga being motherly toward Kira?

Is that the only reason Holga deserves to live? Because she's so mommy to his kid? I mean, I get it, his journey is realizing he needs to be less selfish -- not choosing to bring his wife back, but rather the true mother of his daughter, blah blah blah, but wow, Holga is so much more than that, and has BEEN so much more than that throughout the film, so yeah. I hugely resented it on her behalf, because his thoughts are once again selfish -- I bring you back to life bec you are surrogate mother to my child! not because you are a human being with her own destiny and I want to see you live it.

wow, I didn't realize how pissed I was.

Holga is so awesome tho.

Birdfeeding

May. 14th, 2025 12:30 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is cloudy and warm.

I fed the birds.  I've seen several sparrows and house finches, a catbird, and a blackbird.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I put out the flats of pots and watered them.

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I planted the 'Poquito' orange anise hyssop at the base of the barrel garden.  I figure the hummingbirds will like it, since I couldn't find a jumbo salvia this year.

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I planted the iris 'Aureovariegata yellow' at the base of the barrel garden.  Its leaves are creamy green with wide yellow streaks.  :D

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I moved the 4 big smooth pots from the top of the new picnic table to the ground along the south bench.  This makes room for the remaining 3 fluted pots to be added later, and gives me 3 tiers of planting space on the side.

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I filled a big fluted pot with half compost and half potting soil.  I planted a 'Chocolate Sprinkles' tomato in it.  These were a big favorite last year, so I bought 2 of them.  Regrettably I'm out of marigolds.  I may just use seeds in that one.  I put the pot on top of the new picnic table.

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I potted up the second 'Chocolate Sprinkles' tomato the same way.

I've seen a male cardinal.

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I potted up a 'Carmen' Italian sweet pepper in the last of the big fluted pots and put it on the picnic table.

I've seen a brown-headed cowbird.

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I took several 'Ambrosia' melon plants that came in the same small pot, and put them in a much bigger pot which I moved to the new picnic table.  The fruit looks like a cantaloupe but is actually an exotic melon.

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I took some pictures around the yard.

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I sowed seeds for goldenberry and 'Aunt Molly's' ground cherry in large pots on the patio.

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I planted coreopsis 'Permathread Red Satin' and yarrow 'Firefly Red Pop' below the barrel garden.

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I planted a 'Husker Red' penstemon in the wildflower garden.  A spike of white flowers is blooming there, something I don't recognize, but very pretty.

The first purple-and-ivory iris is blooming in the wagonwheel garden.  The first two dark purple irises are blooming in the tulip bed.

I've seen two brown thrashers, a lady cardinal, the black-sided skunk, and a fox squirrel.

EDIT 5/14/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I watered the newly planted things.

I brought in the flats of pots, now down to 3 partial flats.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.
  

Photos: Sunset

May. 14th, 2025 03:40 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
I had the camera out at dusk to take pictures of the completed trough pot project, so I got some sunset pictures too.

Walk with me ... )
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
[personal profile] tamaranth
2025/072: A Language of Dragons — S F Williamson
‘The ones who have hoards don’t need to work, but the ones who don’t, well …’
Hoards. Like piles of gold or money. Why do dragons need money? They don’t shop for groceries or pay bills. It hits me that, in all my years learning dragon tongues, I’ve never questioned how dragons fit into our human society. [p. 180]

London, 1923, where there's a Peace Agreement between the British government and the Dragon Queen; where some dragons fought in the Great War alongside humans, but others massacred the entire human population of Bulgaria; where Vivien Featherswallow, seventeen years old and the daughter of respectable Second Class parents, will stop at nothing to ensure that she can continue her studies in dragon linguistics, and prevent her little sister from ever being demoted to Third Class. Read more... )

How to Secure Trough Pots to a Bench

May. 14th, 2025 12:30 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today's project was filling a set of trough pots and securing them to the benches of the new picnic table. (This is from Tuesday, but it's after midnight so the date reads Wednesday. See some "before" pictures.) There are 6 troughs total, although one already had wild strawberries in it from earlier. Each bench holds 3 troughs. I got these and a bunch of other pots when Big Lots went out of business.

Read more... )

Good News

May. 14th, 2025 12:05 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Good news includes all the things which make us happy or otherwise feel good. It can be personal or public. We never know when something wonderful will happen, and when it does, most people want to share it with someone. It's disappointing when nobody is there to appreciate it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our joys and pat each other on the back.

What good news have you had recently? Are you anticipating any more? Have you found a cute picture or a video that makes you smile? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your life a little happier?

3 Weeks - 14

May. 13th, 2025 09:47 pm
esteefee: John and Rodney in sepiatone, back to back shooting their big guns with the caption 'Ass to Ass.' (ass2ass)
[personal profile] esteefee


ugh I'm bad at this social media thing! sorry I haven't had time yet to respond to all the awesome comments yesterday. it was so cool seeing into my friends' writers brains.

today I am posting a plot bunny from my own ridiculous brain:

Your OTP are dropped into a death cage match! they don't know each other, but somehow during the match they come to realize they can't possibly kill each other. it's the cutest meet death! or deathliest meet cute! What happens next??? ONLY YOU KNOW

Photos: South Lot and Savanna

May. 13th, 2025 11:39 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
These pictures are from the south lot and savanna.

Walk with me ... )