Elizabeth Porter Birdsall

The Bird of the River (Kage Baker, standalone); whatever the nearest Mary Stewart is that I haven't reread in a while; A Little Princess (I know it has problems but I imprinted on it); The Dark is Rising or The Grey King; to mix it up with nonfiction, Ruth Goodman's The Domestic Revolution

perhaps even more!!!

(oh my GOD)

Made this soup last night and it was a hit: localkitchenblog.com/2012/09/25/1... (Added extra thyme and sage; used veggie broth so I also added umami seasoning and stirred in some blue cheese at the end, but I only like squash when it's super umami so ymmv. Chicken broth would address this anyway.)

How to Turn Off AI Tools Like Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Copilot, and More via @ConsumerReports AI features are crowding into Google search, Gmail, iPhones, Windows laptops, and other products. If you're suffering from AI overload, these settings can help.

oooh. Bookmarking this! "How to turn off AI tools in Apple, Google, Microsoft, and more." Step-by-step instructions from Consumer Reports.

Oh, marvelous! That looks like a great time even without the research angle, but an amazing find with it!

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Hey authors, the official list of Anthropic works is available for searching.

secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup

In other news, an easy fast to anyone dating tomorrow, and if you're observing Yom Kippur with or without fasting, may it be meaningful ❤️

Just a genuine lifelong hero to me. May we all live even half as well.

And unlike many childhood role models, she was the real deal. Even up until right before her death she was a tireless advocate for conservation and animals and science, gracious and eloquent and compassionate and humble, constantly using her platform for good, always quietly but firmly herself.

I read In The Shadow Of Man over and over as a nature-loving kid. She was a genuine inspiration. I thought until well into college that I was going to be a scientist, and she wasn't the reason, but she was a major role model. She did the kind of work kid me dreamed of.

I'm not someone who's usually much affected by the deaths of famous people I don't know, but the news today of Jane Goodall's #death hit hard. Dying at 91 of natural causes after a long life well and energetically lived is pretty much all one can ask, but still.

I don't object to this new feature existing as I'm sure filtering out unknown languages improves the experience for a lot of people, but I loathe that it was turned on for me by default.

I am so here for every single one of these updates (but I KNOW to the autocorrected capitalization; it drives me up a wall)

CAN'T WAIT

Yeah, I can come up with a bunch of theories but they'd all be like, "well, I can see how a guy who felt like and experienced this could have become Nick" and not "this is my clear idea of Nick and who he is"

Yes exactly!!

I remember discussing with you right after my reread, and it's fascinating because to me, the landscapes felt way more real than any of the people in them! Fairy tale either way but from different angles.

Like, my read would be the "Nick has trauma he's refusing to even look at and it's shaping all of this" reading, but that's in part because I think it's more interesting; I don't necessarily feel bound by authorial intent but it's interesting to me that I don't know what the authorial intent is.

And/or Doylistically if Fitzgerald put in the WWI background because it was illogical for Nick not to have one but wasn't really interested in exploring that, or if that's part of what he's talking about with the unreliability. I don't know! I can't tell! And I don't know that much about Fitzgerald

And yet because Nick is so very unreliable, and because of how it's written, I TRULY AND SINCERELY cannot tell if Nick has WWI trauma he's never looking at even indirectly, or if Nick is one of those people who managed to somehow skate through without deep trauma (some did! idk how!!) & move on

But it IS omnipresent. Nick getting demobbed, Nick and Gatsby having met in Europe, the occasional mentions of other veterans, the whole situation with Gatsby and Daisy breaking up in the first place, the economic impacts... it's all woven through.

Yeah, I found the WWI aspects fascinating, because... like... mentions of the war are subtle but omnipresent, in the way you only get in books that are written at a time when everybody was living in the shadow of an event. A modern book would pause to spell some of this out and GG never does.

I hate vulture capitalism and I hate everything about this but fyi, sewing friends

HI FRIEND HI I mean uh. Modulating my voice into something more low-key for less pressure lol. But sincerely, zero worries on ghosting (life happens!!), I'm so glad you aten't dead, and I'm so happy to see you <333

I have absolutely zero plans on Monday and I am SO EXCITED for it

you are a sheer delight who is generous and kind and creative and smart and thoughtful and just generally super cool!!! I love every single thing I hear about your swans and I'm excited to hear more any time

carefree summer fun!

(also omg I love these photos so much)

look sometimes it's useful to have incomprehensible in-group shorthand, and sometimes it's just funny, and sometimes it's both!

...and sometimes it's just ridiculous but that's another kind of funny so around we wrap

anyway #uspolitics for the tag-blockers & disclaimer that this is all thirdhand from other people watching other people watch stuff more closely, but my understanding is that a certain cheeto hasn't been seen by any press etc for a couple of days and has no events scheduled this weekend so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯