The weekly chat posts are intended for just that, chatting among each other. What are you currently watching? Reading? What actor/idol are you currently following? What are you looking forward to? Are you busy writing, creating art? Or did you have no time at all for anything, and are bemoaning that fact?

Whatever it is, talk to us about it here. Tell us what you liked or didn't like, and if you want to talk about spoilery things, please hide them under either of these codes:
<b>Highlight for spoilers!</b> *<span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Write your spoilery text here.</span>* or <details> <summary>Write a non-spoilery summary of what's hidden under the arrow here.</summary> Write your spoilery text here. </details>

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

conradveidt

A community dedicated to Conrad Veidt. Whether you are a seasoned fan, a casual fan, someone who has seen everything there is to be seen or who's just starting their journey, this community is for you!

You can post about anything related to Herr Veidt here. Discussions, film reviews, fanworks (fic, art, icons, vids, anything!), recs, meta, picspams, gifs, etc. Discussion of film/culture and society of the 1910s-1940s is also acceptable.

Every month, we shall highlight one film.

Right now, we're hosting a movie tournament.

Crockpot Chicken and Dumplings

INGREDIENTS

1 onion, chopped

1 1/4 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 tsp. dried oregano

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

2 (10.5-oz.) cans cream of chicken soup

2 c. low-sodium chicken broth

4 sprigs fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

2 stalks celery, chopped

2 large carrots, peeled and chopped

1 c. frozen peas, thawed

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 (16.3-oz.) can refrigerated biscuits

DIRECTIONS

Scatter onion in the bottom of a large slow cooker then top with chicken. Season with oregano, salt, and pepper.

Pour soup and broth over chicken, then add thyme and bay leaf. Cover and cook on High until the chicken is cooked through, about 3 hours.

Discard thyme and bay leaf, then shred chicken with two forks. Stir in celery, carrots, peas, and garlic. Cut or tear biscuits into small bite-sized pieces then stir into chicken mixture. Spoon liquid over any biscuits at the top.

Cook on High until vegetables are tender and biscuits are cooked through, stirring every 30 minutes, about 1 hour to 1 hour 30 minutes

Peach and cream cheese loaf
INGREDIENTS:
8 oz  cream cheese (1 package), softened
Fruits & Vegetables

½ cup  butter, 1 stick
1 ½ cups sugar
½ tablespoon lemon zest
2 eggs
2 ¼ cups all purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
1 cup milk
15 oz can sliced peaches, drained and diced
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and grease a standard bread loaf pan.
In a large bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter. Add sugar, eggs, and lemon zest and beat until light and fluffy.

In a small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Once thoroughly combined, slowly add the dry ingredients and milk to the wet ingredients and fold in the peaches …

Transfer batter to the prepared loaf pan and bake for 50-55 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
Let loaf cool before slicing.

Not Quite 365 Days Questions.

7. Do you embrace technology or prefer things the way they used to be (or a bit of both)?

A bit of both. I love learning new things, but someone might need to show me what I'm doing. I'm a slow learner, but once I've got it, I'm good to go.

90 questions

5. If you could have telekinesis (moving things with your mind) or telepathy (ability to read minds) which would you choose and why?


I would choose telepathy because I'm always one step behind everyone else. 😂 Honestly I guess neither. I wouldn't like either of them. That's my answer and I'm sticking to it.

How about you?

Topics for talk

Favorite Movies. (Three top favorites)

To Kill a Mockingbird
Shawshank Redemption
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

I love movies so my list would have gone on for an hour.

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

Was the agricultural revolution and the explosion of civilizations that came from it an overall good thing for humans or a negative? In other words, would it have been better or worse for people to stay in small tribes?

( Read more... )

I took some pictures around the yard today. These are from the savanna. (See the house yard.)

( Walk with me ... )

I'm worried I lost my kindle when I misplaced my red bag in which everything is. Well, not everything, but perhaps my kindle. Or maybe not. My kindle might be under my bed. If it's not under my bed, I'll have to replace it sooner or later. I'm a bit wary of looking and finding out one way or another.

******************

( Read more... )

Today was unseasonably warm and sunny, so I took pictures around the yard. The first few are from indoors, then the rest are the house yard. (See the savanna.)

( Walk with me ... )

In helping one of my clients sort through several decades of personal photos, we found the Polaroids of the man sitting on a bed and masturbating with his head out of frame came with a note where he extorted his adoration for her and his desire to masturbate while she watched. Our best guess is he followed her to her building and gave the doorman some story about knowing her and needing her apartment number to get back in touch.

I didn't get a good look and they're long gone by now. I didn't ask why she'd kept them these last few decades or why she decided now was the time to throw them out, either. But the story lives on, and proof positive unsolicited dick pics have been around for as long as the technology for the pics themselves. It was something I'd suspected and in an odd way, it was nice to see the firsthand confirmation.

Only slightly more surprising was seeing someone else pick a cigarette pack out of the trash, fish through the pack, pull out the last one in there, toss the pack away, and start smoking it. I didn't stay to watch, knowing it'd be rude to stare, but boy, what an addiction that is.

People often accused her of carrying potions and poisons in the little vials strung along her belt, half hidden by the fall of her foliage. The dryad didn’t usually bother to explain herself to the sort of people who said such things, but it still hurt. She had gone to a lot of trouble, after all, to source antidotes to the poison of the tree that birthed her, just so that she could heal anyone who suffered ill effects after being kind enough to get close to her.

---

LL#1366

Using my gameboard.

Finally ready for another board. I read 6/6 on my last board and mostly enjoyed everything. I have a few ideas of things I want to read next so hope I get the chance in this board.

Avatar:

MDZS | Supernatural
Skill: Re-draw a prompt once

Roll #1

A 7 7 6, Prompt: contemporary. Althought Survive! Gwanggong! is set in a game it's still technically contemporary.

Roll #2

An 11, man fuck the trap tile, I've hit it 3 times and I just started! New roll is an 8. Prompt: enemies becomes allies/friends. Hmm hope I can find something. That easier than I thought, though not sure exactly what it means since Cale was never their enemy in this timeline. Trash of the Count’s Family.

Roll #3

An 11, prompt: rivals to lovers. Not in the mood, using skill. Prompt: horror element. Got Dropped into a Ghost Story, Still Gotta Works!

Roll #4

A 6, prompt: romance element. I’m A Male Mom in a Nightmare Game though I haven't gotten to the romance yet.

Roll #5

A 7 and the end. Hmm I'll read more Kenkyo, Kenjitsu o Motto ni Ikite Orimasu as the reward.

Everything I wanted to read is on my TBR now!

Though written before it, this book chronologically follows Wild Seed. It picks up the story in 1970s Los Angeles, where the body-hopping immortal Doro has continued his human breeding program, now focused on creating a race of telepaths who can mind-control ordinary humans into total subjugation. He has high hopes for his daughter/lover Mary to become his most powerful telepath yet, but when her abilities fully mature, she accidentally links herself to several other telepaths, gaining psychic power over them. Now, for the first time in thousands of years, there's a real threat to Doro's control and the continuation of his eugenics project.

spoilery thoughts

As I think about this book, a thought keeps arising: This book has no good guys. Mary is not a good guy. She's is positioned as the protagonist because she opposes Doro, and in the world of the books Doro is, if not literally the worst person on Earth, at least the person with the most power to do the most harm over the longest period of time. He is a merciless sociopath who will not stop until he is the absolute ruler of humanity. Being a better person than him is a low, low bar.

To be fair, Mary never intended to bring others under her control and she doesn't know how to stop it, and she at least has some conception of using her power to help others, even if only other telepaths. And yes, most telepaths were dying or succumbing to mental breakdowns before she set up a plan to help them. But she has no qualms about enslaving the mutes (non-telepaths) and using them as an underclass to serve her and the Patternists. Some characters voice concerns, but by that time it's basically too late, she's already consolidated her power and there's no going back.

Doro's downfall has the shape of classical tragedy, as his obsession with controlling others spectacularly backfires and rebounds on him. Everything he's been working towards points inevitably to this outcome, as he creates people with stronger and stronger powers while believing he would somehow remain in control of them. But he can't have it both ways. He's made Mary everything she is, and while she lacks his immortality, she has something he doesn't: followers who see her as a savior, who love her because she's made their lives better, not just because they're scared of her.

No reader is ever going to be sad about Doro finally being defeated, but his defeat means the triumph of a society where an enslaved majority serve a privileged minority. The best you can say for it is that power is shared with a sizeable elite rather than concentrated in one absolute despot. It's the victory of the lesser of two evils—emphasis on the evil. (And again, I am reminded of Kindred's chilling examination of "less bad" enslavers in real world history.)

There actually is one good guy in the book, though. Anyanwu (here called Emma) is a tertiary character. Of course, this was written before her character had been fully revealed in Wild Seed; I wonder how much Butler already knew about her? I'm not sure what I would have thought of her if this book were all I knew. This reading order emphasizes that the best Anyanwu could ever do was to fight Doro to a stalemate, and suggests that she could never defeat him in part because she wasn't ruthless enough. Unlike Mary, she wasn't born into his twisted world, and she has a moral code that goes beyond mere self-preservation. No wonder Mary can't stand her.

With this book I felt more of a sense of it being backstory to an existing work, setting up for what's to come. Which is exactly what it is—it was written as a prequel to the first-published book in the series. And Wild Seed was in turn a prequel to Mind of My Mind, but I got more of a stand-alone vibe from that one. I still do not actually know what eventually becomes of Doro and Mary's descendants, but I am guessing it doesn't go super great for humanity!

Chapter 7: So Huo Qu and his siblings are adopted?

Chapter 8: Huo Qu manages to get Yu Qinghuan's phone number.

Chapter 9: The crew for the filming gets together for the first time. So many names, I'm never going to remember who's who but maybe it's not important.

Chapter 10: Lol Zhao Qingyuan is so immature.

The food talk made me want to look up everything. Honeycomb tripes, durian cake...

He liked being forgotten after he finished his own acting part.

So Zhao Qingyuan doesn't want to be noticed either? Yet he was upset that Yu Qinghuan didn't recognize him at first sight haha. What part is this guy going to play in the story?

Chapter 11: I think the translator got Qingyuan and Qinghuan mixed up a few times in this chapter hahah.

Noo Yu Hinghuan forgot to call Huo Qu!

Chapter 12: Aw, Qinhuan woke up and remembered, and now they're going to get something to eat together. Huo Qu's twin brothers are funny and protective.

Chapter 13: So how did this dude grow to this big safe and sound? Exactly! Did his mother feed him, or only make easy hand foods?

Chapter 14: Will Huo Qu ever learn to cross the road on his own, that is the question.

Chapter 15: "I want two goldfish, but Qinghuan only promised to buy me one." I lol'ed! And Huo Qu's showing a protective? possessive? side.

Chapter 16: Yu Qinghuan putting his phone on do not disturb after setting up an automated reply for Zhao Qinghuan who ended up going on and on and then complained on weibo after finding out, I can't even. 🤣

Chapter 17: So Yu Qinghuan really likes cooking, it gives him a sense of security.

Chapter 18: Poor Zhao Qingyuan, he only got one rib even though they were made for him. Yu Qinghuan is softening towards him. And he got a big director to write something just for him in return for two meals.

Chapter 19: Oh, Yu Qinghuan turned it down. Lol he's getting that script whether he wants it or not. I feel bad because how can he have the life he wants now.

部首
手 part 38
搜, to search; 搓, to rub/twist; 搞, to do ( pinyin )
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=64

词汇
底, bottom; 彻底, thorough; 月底, end of a month ( pinyin )
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-4-word-list/

Guardian:
根据我们搜集的情报来看，一个地星人只有一种异能, based on the information we've gathered, one Dixingren has just one power.
看来赵处长是真的想要探我的底啊, it seems you really want to plumb my depths, Chief Zhao

Me:
搞定!
钥匙原来在我包底。

I guess the joint tour is going well. This is the most wholesome fucking shit I've ever seen.