Not to be rude
Jul. 21st, 2025 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This book too.
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Glancing at Trump's tantrum-of-the-day
Jul. 20th, 2025 11:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Sunshine Revival #5: Be a Carnival Barker!
Jul. 17th, 2025 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Challenge #5
Journaling prompt: Be a carnival barker for your favorite movie, book, or show! Write a post that showcases the best your chosen title has to offer and entices passersby to check it out.
Creative prompt: Write a fic or original story about a character reluctantly doing something they are hesitant about.
Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
(I am not going to write a fic, but I read the prompt and went OH, IT'S ME!!! I am very hesitant about the things I need to do these days, and pretty reluctant to actually do them. But I'm trying. By gods, I'm trying.)
Re: the journaling prompt: it doesn't include "your favorite game", HOW RUDE. But I am going to natter at you about Final Fantasy XIV anyway, because (a) most of my media consumption is through games these days, (b) I get to meme at you.
*takes a deep breath*
CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED MMORPG
FINAL FANTASY XIV
WITH AN EXPANDED FREE TRIAL
WHICH YOU CAN PLAY THROUGH THE ENTIREY OF
A REALM REBORN
AND THE AWARD-WINNING
HEAVENSWARD
EXPANSION
AND ALSO THE AWARD-WINNING
STORMBLOOD
EXPANSION
UP TO LEVEL 70
FOR FREE
WITH NO RESTRICTIONS
ON PLAYTIME?
https://freetrial.finalfantasyxiv.com
( a bunch of reasons wny I love Final Fantasy XIV )
Sunshine Revival 3 (Summer Foods) & 4 (Smiles)
Jul. 17th, 2025 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
( Challenge 3: Summer-associated Foods )
( Challenge 4: What makes you smile? )
Robben Island by Pamela Sneed
Jul. 18th, 2025 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
is in a small ferry to Robben Island
one that shuttles you to the former prison
where those who fought against apartheid were held
The only answers may be in one wool blanket
a basin
toilet
cell
and the tiny windows of Robben Island
in the discarded artillery
the rock and the limestone yard
where many were blinded
driven mad
Now the survivors former prisoners
give tours
their faces carved like tree roots exposed
The only answers may be in the surrounding peaks of Table Mountain
its Twelve Apostles
all now standing as testament to what
through years of struggles
can be defeated
overcome
Link
Something that's always interested me
Jul. 15th, 2025 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
1. Every time you do your taxes or do almost anything that involves interacting with the state government, you'll have to pick your county, and if you live in Brooklyn or Staten Island that means they list the county with the coterminous borough in parentheses.
2. If you have a kid in school, every year they send you a form reminding you to fill out your Emergency Contact Card, and every year they include the phrase "Blue Card" right afterwards. Because that's what we all call it. Because they're blue.
3. And here's one I haven't thought about much since adolescence, but if a job is apt to hire teens then they will ask for their Employment Certification and then, inevitably, add "Working Papers" right afterwards, again, because that's what everybody calls them.
There must be other examples I'm missing, as well as non-NY examples. I sometimes wonder if it'd be easier for them to just cave to the inevitable and start listing the everyday term first and then list the "real" term afterwards.
Tuesday word: Harrumph
Jul. 15th, 2025 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
Harrumph (verb)
harrumph [huh-ruhmf]
verb (used without object)
1. to clear the throat audibly in a self-important manner.: The professor harrumphed good-naturedly.
2. to express oneself gruffly.
Origin: First recorded in 1935–40; imitative
Example Sentences
Trump is far from the first US president to harrumph at Europe's reluctance to do more for, as well as spend more on, its own defence.
From BBC
"Trousers," exclaims the Prince Andrew character, with a fruity harrumph, as though taken aback by a female interviewer wearing trousers.
From BBC
I humored her harrumphs when my best friend and I waited in line for hours to see the second batch in the late 1990s.
From Los Angeles Times
They treated an audience that knows how to harrumph to a smorgasbord of how things should be done.
From Washington Post
In one harrumph, Trump charged that no incumbent president since 1960 had failed to win the general election after winning Iowa, Florida and Ohio.
From Washington Post
Now YOU come up with a sentence (or fic? or graphic?) that best illustrates the word.
Today's five second mini-rant:
Jul. 16th, 2025 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Everybody needs to stop saying that dialect words are, ipso facto, informal.
Edit: On a different note, omfg this dude.
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Monday: kerning
Jul. 14th, 2025 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
noun
1. the setting of two letters closer together than is usual by removing space between them. Kerning can also set the letter glyphs wider apart, if the layout designer so chooses. The most commonly met kerning tightens the glyphs up (by a varying amount for each pair of glyphs, as adjusted by the typographer) to make text more readable.
examples
1. The finishing airbrushing of an illo, the final tweak or kerning of an art headline, was important to him.
"Pacific NW magazine honors the life and work of art director David Miller" Seattle Times 12/16/22
2. It highlights just how much thought goes into making sure the thickness, kerning, and size of a font is optimal for the environment where it’s viewed. "How to change your font in Slack" The Verge 09/11/20
origins
French carne corner, from French dialect, from Latin cardin-, cardo hinge

Hm. I thought we got a big bag of cat food
Jul. 15th, 2025 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This is... not so great, really.
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Sunday Word: Exculpate
Jul. 13th, 2025 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
exculpate [ek-skuhl-peyt, ik-skuhl-peyt]
verb:
to clear from a charge of guilt or fault; free from blame; vindicate
Examples:
He devises a daring, sometimes distracting but ultimately inspired format by saving his commentary for footnotes that contextualize, teasingly contradict and occasionally exculpate Rodgers from her unsparing self-assessments. (Charles McNulty, Stephen Sondheim and Mary Rodgers, late Broadway greats, have brilliant last words, Los Angeles Times, November 2022)
An amnesty could exculpate as many as 1,400 activists and politicians involved in the attempt to separate Catalonia from Spain. (Spanish Socialists and Catalan Junts reach deal for government support, amnesty, Reuters, November 2023)
In a perverse circular logic, the crime itself can come to seem like the clearest evidence of the condition that is held up to exculpate the mother - and also like its own form of punishment. (Eren Orbey, A Husband in the Aftermath of His Wife's Unfathomable Act, Reuters, October 2024)
Cato attacked him for this, and Lucilius ran the risk of losing his tribunate, and many of the friends of Pompeius came forward to exculpate him and said that he did not seek that office or wish for it. (Plutarch, Lives)
Origin:
'to clear from suspicion of wrong or guilt,' 1650s, from Medieval Latin exculpatus, past participle of exculpare, from Latin ex culpa, from ex 'out of' + culpa ablative of culpa 'blame, fault.' (Online Etymology Dictionary)
There's no need to say 'my bad' if you're unfamiliar with exculpate; while the word is far from rare, it is most often encountered in formal writing in reference to the clearing of someone of alleged fault or guilt, as in 'they were exculpated of any wrongdoing.' You may be more familiar with a pair of terms that, like exculpate, come from the Latin noun culpa, meaning 'blame' or 'guilt.' One is the adjective culpable, used to describe someone deserving of condemnation or blame. The other is the Latin phrase mea culpa, which translates directly as 'through my fault' and refers to an acknowledgement of personal fault or error that is more formal than, well, 'my bad.' (Merriam-Webster)
Well, I'm (probably?) hired pending the results of this background check
Jul. 14th, 2025 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
(Don't think I've stopped applying other places, mind you, but I'm really not in a position to be picky, either.)
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