denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

latest spinning WIP

Aug. 31st, 2025 10:57 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


Two singles; will ply them tomorrow, I expect. Assuming no plying/finishing disasters, this will go to [personal profile] niqaeli. ♥

Dear FIAB creator(s)

Aug. 31st, 2025 02:05 am
trobadora: (Trobadora)
[personal profile] trobadora
Dear [community profile] ficinabox creator(s),

thank you so much for creating a gift for me! I'll be absolutely thrilled about anything you can create about the relationships or worldbuilding themes I requested. Here are all my request details and prompts, as well as general preferences/likes etc.!

My AO3 account is [archiveofourown.org profile] Trobadora, and it's set to welcome treats.

General Preferences

Likes & Dislikes/DNWs )

Fandoms, relationships, worldbuilding

In somewhat alphabetical order:

Jump directly to:
Christabel/Grimm crossover: Christabel/Geraldine in Grimm )

Grimm: Nick/Renard/Juliette, Worldbuilding )

镇魂 | Guardian (TV): Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing/Zhu Hong, Shen Wei & Ya Qing, Worldbuilding )

Grimm/Guardian crossovers: various combinations of Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan, Ya Qing, Sean Renard, Juliette Silverton, Nick Burkhardt )

Nantucket Trilogy - S.M. Stirling: Kashtiliash & Raupasha )

Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Anastasia/Jabberwocky )

Sherlock (BBC): Sherlock Holmes/Jim Moriarty )

山河令 | Word of Honor: Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu, Worldbuilding )

fiber redux

Aug. 30th, 2025 06:04 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Cloud is SO HAPPY with her new nesting material:



Y'all. I'd missed an earlier message (thanks, FaceBook!) but I managed not to pick out sheep fleece (breed unknown). Due to the holiday weekend, this wasn't an in-person transaction, although I hope to return in a bitand be able to talk to the farmer in person!

...I am sitting on a few pounds each of alpaca (definitely huacaya, not sure if one is suri) and angora goat fiber a.k.a. MOHAIR. Mind you, I would have been very happy to work with raw WOOL.

Well, I'll be picking through vegetable matter and sorting this VERY SLOWLY for the rest of 2025 lol. :) I do own hand carders but I think I save my pennies for a drum carder for the holidays...
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin
It’s time to start thinking about Yuletide! Here is our schedule for this year. Please note that the time of some deadlines has changed from last year. This may mean the date in UTC has also changed, or that the date relative to your own time zone may have changed.


2025 Schedule

Monday 15 to Friday 26 September: Nominations (end 9pm UTC 26 September)
Tuesday 14 to Friday 24 October: Sign-ups (end 9pm UTC 24 October)
Sunday 26 October: Assignments out (may be earlier)
Wednesday 10 December: Default deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 17 December: Assignment deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 24 December: Main collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

Please check back closer to the time if you want to be sure about deadlines! Deadlines in other timezones may be closer than they appear. If your region has a seasonal time shift during the above dates, your relationship to the deadline will also change. We recommend using timeanddate.com to check when each deadline is for you before it occurs.

New Year's Resolutions

We just sent an email to everyone who took part in Yuletide 2024 and who needs to complete a New Year's Resolution story before signing up again.

We use the email that's associated with your AO3 account. This is a good time to check what that email is! If you have any doubts about whether you received it, you're welcome to check your status with us by emailing yuletideadmin@gmail.com. Please include your AO3 name.

Who needs to complete a New Year's Resolution

If you took part in Yuletide and defaulted after the default deadline, or you submitted an incomplete story at the posting deadline, or you defaulted in Yuletide twice in a row, we generally ask you to complete a New Year’s Resolution story before you sign up again.

See the rules for defaulting on AO3

If you defaulted in a previous year, we will not have sent you a new reminder. We issued a general amnesty for ordinary defaults before the 2023 round, but if you were told you needed to complete a NYR due to turning in a placeholder story or a similar problem, you are probably still on our NYR list. Please check with us if you aren’t sure!

How to fulfil the requirement

Stories written for the purpose of re-qualifying for Yuletide must be posted to the New Year's Resolutions 2025 collection before you sign up to Yuletide 2025. They must be over 1,000 words, written for a specific person's past Yuletide prompt, and given to that person. You can write for any Yuletide 2024 prompt, or you can choose an older Yuletide prompt as long as the fandom in which you write is small enough to still qualify for Yuletide (that is, there are fewer than 1,000 fics on AO3 that are in English, complete, and over 1,000 words long).

Purpose of New Year's Resolutions

The NYR system exists for several reasons:
  • It's an incentive to encourage people either to default early, or, to push on through and post something

  • It works as a warm-up, or as practice, or as a way of proving to yourself you can finish a story to a prompt

  • It's a contribution to the project of getting more stories written in tiny fandoms

  • It's a way of ensuring that past prompts don't get entirely forgotten.


If you had to default in a past year, we are aware that this may have been for a carefully-considered reason or in a difficult time. Needing to complete a NYR does not mean we think you're terrible. Even members of the mod team have needed to write NYRs in the past. We hope you use it as an opportunity to write something you enjoy.

People are also welcome to write NYR stories just for fun! The collection will stay open for late fills until Yuletide 2025 sign-ups close (approx Oct 24).

2024 prompts



Prompts for Yuletide 2010-2024 can be found through the relevant individual collections and the NYR collections (see the Yuletide parent collection).

Contact Mods | Participant DW | Participant LJ | Pinch Hits | Discord


Please either comment logged-in or sign a name. Unsigned anonymous comments will be left screened.

Well, that escalated

Aug. 30th, 2025 11:24 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


Sheep and alpaca! Raw unprocessed fiber bought directly from a local-ish farmer. I reckon processing this will be my hobby project for the rest of the year.



Fiber animal wonders about her own fate. :) :) I have...10g of catten floof (which is very spinnable!).

ETA: Also, this may have happened /o\

marthawells: Murderbot with helmet (Default)
[personal profile] marthawells
If you missed the live recording of the Murderbot interview episode at WorldCon, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-JRHSABM24

This includes the special message to me that the show's cast sent, which was awesome.


***


I'm still sick, but getting better bit by bit.

Foundation 3.08

Aug. 29th, 2025 10:35 am
selenak: (Visionless - Foundation)
[personal profile] selenak
In which cult leaders do as cult leaders are wont to do, and all Cleons find out something new.

Remembering childhood lullabys can be key to one's survival )

spinning cont'd

Aug. 28th, 2025 01:17 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


Current WIP: a gorgeous merino-silk-angelina blend.

Testing out a Dreaming Robots e-spinner, the Electric Eel Wheel 6.1. It's terrific and very easy to assemble and get running (at least after the learning curve on the Ashford Traveller treadle wheel). I hear the even more budget-friendlier Electric Eel Nano 2. (about $140 USD) 1 is fiddly, but I wonder. My use case for this is plying, which I find ungodly miserable.



Meanwhile, the local fiber animal is "helping" again. Cloud's floof is VERY spinnable so we're just randomly gathering catten floof while brushing her incredibly soft coat (she's mostly undercoat, and it's WILDLY soft).



(Sorry for the messy floor...I'm still under the weather and spinning is soothing/)
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Pre-launch for Ex Tenebris, a "a gothic space investigation TTRPG" forthcoming from Black Armada.

Beyond the dark emptiness of space, beyond dreaming, lies the Tenebrium. Only you can unearth its mysteries, defeat the twisted horrors that lurk there, and keep humanity from becoming prey.

In Ex Tenebris, you play a ragtag team of investigators, protecting the Republic of Stars from terrifying supernatural threats. You will face sorcerers and cults, dark technology from lost civilisations and the slobbering terrors lurking in the nightmare realm of the Tenebrium.


I will be writing a scenario [Update #2] for this game. :3

:goes back to orchestration homework:

Back

Aug. 27th, 2025 10:46 am
marthawells: Murderbot with helmet (Default)
[personal profile] marthawells
I'm back, sort of. We did a week of vacation after WorldCon, then got sick on the last day, so I'm still recovering. Covid tests were negative, so I think it's just a bad cold. It probably wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't had to do a full day of travel from 6:00 am to 10:30 pm to get home.


More later, but one of my favorite things was the really wonderful piece that N.K. Jemisin wrote about me for the program book.



***

Big thing I wanted to mention here: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books

This is a 14 ebook Humble Bundle from Tor, (DRM-free as usual) and you can select a portion of the price to donate to World Central Kitchen.
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
On a personal note, peace to Rai Weiss (https://news.mit.edu/2025/professor-emeritus-rainer-weiss-dies-0826) - physicist (co-won the Nobel Prize for detection of gravity waves at LIGO); learnt yesterday that he'd passed. I knew him only glancingly/socially (my husband worked with him as a grad student at MIT at LIGO Hanford) but I remember his extraordinary kindness and warmth.

DragonCon & BPAL?!

Aug. 26th, 2025 11:36 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Do I know anyone who is going to DragonCon this weekend in Atlanta, Georgia and who is

(a) willing to buy some BPAL for me there and ship it to me (Louisiana)
(b) in exchange for either filthy lucre (PayPal or Venmo) or
(c) 4 oz. handspun yarn just for you to be negotiated?

examples of my spinning:


wool, 2-ply


wool/sari silk, 2-ply

and more )

re: (c), fibers I have on hand in sufficient quantity



These are wool. Front left (greens & blues) and front right (blues & greys) I have 4-ish oz.

In back, I have 1-2 oz. of others (pink & blue, sky blue, navy blue), which could be blended, or I could spin multiple yarns up to 4 oz.

(I can't get more of the colorways shown here because these were inherited from others' destashes.)

Also 2 oz each of the following:



- left: 25/25/25/25 flax/hemp/cotton/ramie blend
- right: 25/25/25/25 flax/hemp/bamboo/ramie blend

I have smaller quantities of various sari silk colorways that could be blended into most of these for effect. (The silk fiber is the stuff on the chair, not the wool yarn draped over the arm lol.)



Or I could order US-based fiber batts/combed top (etc) within an agreed price range and spin those for you.

But I imagine filthy lucre is the most interesting. :p Leave a comment or email me at yoon at yoonhalee dot com!

moar spinning

Aug. 26th, 2025 07:59 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
This one's going to an astronomer friend. I think catten is trying to figure out where the SHEEP are. :p



Earlier:



denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

spinning, cont'd

Aug. 25th, 2025 07:50 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


40/40/20 cotton/tussah silk/hemp (the seller called it an "experimental blend"). Very inconsistent yarn thanks to the learning curve, as I'm still quite new to this. Surprisingly soft once plied, though, despite the hemp content, and one of my favorite fiber blends to spin because there's never a dull moment. This one's going to my graduate advisor.

Cloud oversaw the winding of the center-pull ball using a plying-size Turkish spindle. (I did the actual spinning and plying on the wheel.)



(Still buried under orchestration homework and health stuff, but fortunately I am taking a LONG break from writing so I can recuperate.)
justmarriedmod: (Default)
[personal profile] justmarriedmod posting in [community profile] yuletide
[community profile] justmarriedexchange is a marriage-themed multifandom exchange for marriage tropes of all kinds: convenient, accidental, undercover, arranged, forced, and so on. The requirements are 1500 words for fic, clean lineart on unlined paper for art, and a complete recording of 1500 words or 10 minutes for podfic.

We have some post-deadline pinch hits, currently due August 29th 11:59PM UTC (countdown), or negotiable.

PH 48 - Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), 黄金の太陽 | Golden Sun Series, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)

PH 49 - Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, 鸣潮 | Wuthering Waves (Video Game), Limbus Company (Video Game)

If you might be interested in one of these pinch hits, you can find more details or claim the pinch hit at the post here. Thank you very much!

Of Beatles and Georgians

Aug. 24th, 2025 03:40 pm
selenak: (JohnPaul by Jennymacca)
[personal profile] selenak
I used my time in GB to acquire a lot of books as well, of course. Some of which were:

Ian Leslie: John & Paul. A Love Story in Songs. No prices for guessing whom this is about. The songs of the title are 43, all in all (the majority of which but not all hail from the Beatles era), used and explored as sign posts to where John Lennon and Paul McCartney were in their respective lives and emotional development. Spoilers get by with a little help from their friends. )


Sean Lusk: A Woman of Opinion. Which is a novel about the fascinating Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Georgian wit, poet and travelogue, whose most famous work I reviewed here. Spoilers have indeed opinions alore. )

and lastly, a pictorial postcript to my Born with Teeth review:


Born with Teeth 2


Born with Teeth 1

PSA: The Middleman

Aug. 22nd, 2025 09:33 pm
trobadora: (Moriarty - OMG)
[personal profile] trobadora
Remember The Middleman?

Via [personal profile] muccamukk:
Javier Grillo-Marxuach (on BlueSky): hey everyone, wanna watch my tv show “the middleman”
on streaming with no added charges?
I have such fond memories of that show. And it's now freely available online Archive.org!

Foundation 3.07

Aug. 22nd, 2025 06:00 pm
selenak: (Visionless - Foundation)
[personal profile] selenak
In which it's backstory time, for more than one character, while in the present the end times keep rolling.

Spoilers wouldn't like to be a ferret on Trantor )

Profile

winter: (Default)
Beth Winter

October 2023

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15 161718192021
22232425262728
293031    

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags