SGA: Unmanifest Destiny by vain_glorious
Nov. 29th, 2025 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mific posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fancakeFandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, Teyla Emmagan, Sam Carter
Rating: Unrated. I'd say, Teen.
Length: 8260
Content Notes: The author chose not to warn.
Creator Links: vain_glorious on AO3
Themes: Mystery and suspense, Road trips, Team, Friendship, AU: fork in the road
Summary: Following the events of 5X01, Team Sheppard goes to Earth and takes a roadtrip across the US.
Reccer's Notes: The team, plus newborn Torren, are back in the USA, travelling across the country and stopping at all John's favourite attractions. It should be a fun time, but they're all in unhappy moods and John can't get them to perk up at all. As the story progresses, we become aware that something's off, but it's hard to figure out what. The mystery's finally made clear in a possibly hopeful ending, depending on your point of view. It's not for those who don't like any darkness in their fics, but there's great characterisation and it's very well written, surprisingly funny at times, and the ending is powerful.
Fanwork Links: Unmanifest Destiny
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, Teyla Emmagan, Sam Carter
Rating: Unrated. I'd say, Teen.
Length: 8260
Content Notes: The author chose not to warn.
If you'd much rather know about major AO3 warnings and be spoiled for the reveal at the end, click the arrow at left. SPOILERS
John has died and it's his ghost or semi-ascended self keeping the team company on their memorial road trip. He's kind of in denial about this until the end, after which he ascends.Themes: Mystery and suspense, Road trips, Team, Friendship, AU: fork in the road
Summary: Following the events of 5X01, Team Sheppard goes to Earth and takes a roadtrip across the US.
Reccer's Notes: The team, plus newborn Torren, are back in the USA, travelling across the country and stopping at all John's favourite attractions. It should be a fun time, but they're all in unhappy moods and John can't get them to perk up at all. As the story progresses, we become aware that something's off, but it's hard to figure out what. The mystery's finally made clear in a possibly hopeful ending, depending on your point of view. It's not for those who don't like any darkness in their fics, but there's great characterisation and it's very well written, surprisingly funny at times, and the ending is powerful.
Fanwork Links: Unmanifest Destiny
Update [me, health]
Nov. 28th, 2025 04:54 pmsidereaVery shortly after I posted my recent request for pointers on 3D printing education – a request which was occasioned by my getting excited over my new and improved typing capability courtesy of my new NocFree ergonomic keyboard and wanting to make it a peripheral – my shoulder/back went *spung* in the location and way I had had a repetitive strain injury a decade+ previously.
*le sigh*
I'm back to writing ("writing") slowly and miserably by dictation, because all of my other forms of data entry aggravate this RSI. (This explains how rambly and poorly organized the previous post was and this one too will be.)
I'm going to try to debug my ergonomics, but it remains to be seen whether I can resume typing.
Thanksgiving came at an opportune time, because it took me away from computers for a day. But I had wanted to get another post out before the end of the month. We'll see what happens.
So, uh, I had been going to post about how I have worked back up to something like 80%, maybe 90%, of my keyboard fluency on the NocFree. Eit.
*le sigh*
I'm back to writing ("writing") slowly and miserably by dictation, because all of my other forms of data entry aggravate this RSI. (This explains how rambly and poorly organized the previous post was and this one too will be.)
I'm going to try to debug my ergonomics, but it remains to be seen whether I can resume typing.
Thanksgiving came at an opportune time, because it took me away from computers for a day. But I had wanted to get another post out before the end of the month. We'll see what happens.
So, uh, I had been going to post about how I have worked back up to something like 80%, maybe 90%, of my keyboard fluency on the NocFree. Eit.
sidereaI see that I didn't note last year's Annual Introverts Liberation Feast. Perhaps I wrote a draft that I never got around to posting. It was something of a grueling deathmarch. Because my physical disability makes me largely unable to participate in food prep or cleaning, it almost entirely falls on Mr B to do, and he is already doing something like 99% of the household chores, so both of us wind up up against our physical limits doing Thanksgiving dinner.
But the thing is, part of the reason we do Thanksgiving dinner ourselves to begin with, is we manage the labor of keeping ourselves fed through meal prepping. And I really love Thanksgiving dinner as a meal. So preparing a Thanksgiving dinner that feeds 16 allows us to have a nice Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving, and then allows us to each have a prepared Thanksgiving dinner every day for another seven days. So this is actually one part family tradition, seven parts meal prep for the following week, and one part getting homemade stock from the carcass and weeks of subsequent soups. If we didn't do Thanksgiving, we'd still have to figure out something to cook for dinners for the week.
The problem is the differential in effort with a regular batch cook.
So this year for Thanksgiving, I proposed, to make it more humane, we avail ourselves of one of the many local prepared to-go Thanksgiving dinner options, where you just have to reheat the food.
We decided to go with a local barbecue joint that offered a smoked turkey. It came in only two sizes: breast only, which was too small for us, and a whole 14 to 16 lb turkey, which is too large, but too large being better than too small, that's what we got.
We also bought their mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and – new to our table this year – baked macaroni and cheese. Also two pints of their gravy, which turned out to be spectacularly good. We also got a pan of their cornbread (also new to our Thanksgiving spread), for which they are justly famous; bizarrely, they left the cornbread off their Thanksgiving menu, but proved happy to add it to our order from the regular catering menu when we called it in.
We used canned sweet potatoes in syrup and grocery store cubed stuffing (Pepperidge Farm). The sweet potatoes were fine but as is traditional I had a disaster which coated half the kitchen in sugar syrup. The stuffing was... adequate. Our big compromise to save ourselves labor was that we didn't do the big stuffing production with the chopped and sauteed fresh veggies. The place we got the prepared sides has a stuffing but it's a cornbread stuffing, which is not the bread cube version I prefer. We did add dried sage to it.
Reheating the wholly cooked smoked turkey did not go great. We followed the vendor's instructions – leave it wrapped in foil, put two cups of water in a bottom of the roasting pan, 300° F for two hours to get the breast meat to 165° F – which turned out to be in Mr B's words, "delusional". We used a pair of probe thermometers with wireless monitor, one in the thigh and one in the breast, and an oven thermometer to make sure the oven was behaving. The oven was flawless. The temperature in the thigh quickly spiked up while the breast heated slowly, such that by an hour in, there was a 50° F difference in temperature between the two. The thigh reached 165 in about 2 and 1/2 hours, at which point the breast was 117 ° F. By my calculations, given how far it had gotten in 2.5 hrs, at that temperature we'd need another hour and a half to get the whole bird up to 165° F (for a grand total of 4 hours) at which point the drumsticks would probably be shoe leather.
There was a brief moment of despair while we entertained heating the turkey for another hour and a half, but then decided to just have dark meat for Thanksgiving.
The turkey turned out to be 1) delicious and 2) enormous. Mr B carved at the rest of the bird for our meal prep and picked the carcass; I broke the carcass and other remains into three batches this year. There is going to be so much soup.
Mr B had the brilliant idea to portion the sides leftovers into the meal prep boxes before the dinner, so we dispensed two servings of each side into the casseroles we were going to warm them in, and portioned out the rest.
I had the brilliant idea of checking the weather and realizing we could use the porch as an auxiliary fridge for all the sides we had sitting there in the crockery waiting for the tardy turkey to be done so they could go in the oven. Also it was wine degrees Fahrenheit out, so that worked great too.
For beverages, Mr B had a beer, and I had iced tea and a glass of wine. Happily, the packie near the caterer's 1) has introduced online shopping for easy pickup, and 2) amazingly, had a wine I have been looking for for something like 20 years, a Sardegnan white called Aragosta, to which I was introduced to by the late lamented Maurizio's in Boston's North End. Why the wine is called "lobster" I do not know, but it is lovely. The online shopping did not work so happily; when we placed the order the day before (Tuesday), we promptly got the email saying that our order was received, but it wasn't placed until we received the confirmation email. Forty minutes before pick up time (Wednesday), since we still hadn't received a confirmation email, Mr B called in and received a well rehearsed apology and explanation that there was a problem with their new website's credit card integration, so orders weren't actually being charged correctly, but to come on down and they would have the order ready for payment at the register.
As is our custom, we also got savory croissants for lunch/breakfast while cooking from the same bakery we also get dessert. As is also our custom, we ate too much Thanksgiving dinner to have room for dessert, and we'll probably eat it tomorrow.
The smoked turkey meat (at least the dark meat) was delicious. I confess I was a little disappointed with the skin. I'm not a huge skin fan in general, but I was hoping the smoked skin would be delicious. But there was some sort of rub on it that had charred in the smoking process, and I don't like the taste of char.
The reason the turkeys I cook wind up so much moister than apparently everybody else's – I've never managed to succeed at making pan gravy, for the simple reason I've never had enough juice in the pan to make gravy, because all the juice is still in the bird – is that I don't care enough about the skin to bother trying to crisp it. There really is a trade-off between moistness of the meat and crispness of the skin, and I'm firmly of the opinion that you can sacrifice the skin in favor of the meat. The skin on this turkey was perfectly crisped all over and whoever had put the rub on it managed to do an astoundingly good job of applying it evenly. It was a completely wasted effort from my point of view, and I'm not surprised that the turkey we got wound up a bit on the dry side.
That said the smokiness was great. I thought maybe, given how strongly flavored the gravy was, it would overpower the smokiness of the meat, but that was not the case and they harmonized really nicely.
The instructions come with a very important warning that the meat is supposed to be that color: pink. It's really quite alarming if you don't know to expect it, I'm sure. You're not normally supposed to serve poultry that color. But the instructions explain in large letters that it is that color because of the smoking process, and it is in fact completely cooked and safe to eat.
(It belatedly occurs to me to wonder whether that pink is actually from the smoke, or whether they treated it with nitrates. You know, what makes bacon pink.)
The cavity was stuffed with oranges and lemons and a bouquet garni, which was a bit of a hassle to clean out of the carcass for its future use as stock.
The green bean casserole was fine. It's not as good as ours, but then we didn't have to cook it. The mac and cheese was really nice; it would never have occurred to me to put rosemary on the top, but that worked really well. The mashed potatoes were very nice mashed potatoes, and the renown cornbread was even better mopping up the gravy.
The best cranberry sauce remains the kind that stands under its own power, is shaped like the can it came in, and is perfectly homogeneous in its texture.
We aimed to get the bird in the oven at 3:00 p.m. (given that the instructions said 2 hours) with the aim of dinner hitting the table at 6:00 p.m. We had a bit of a delay getting the probe thermometers set up and debugged (note to self: make sure they're plugged all the way in) so the bird went in around 3:15 p.m. At 5:15 p.m. no part of the bird was ready. Around 5:45 p.m. the drumsticks reached 165° F, and we realized the majority of it was in not going to get there anytime in the near future. At this point all the sides had been sitting on the counter waiting to go into the oven for over a half an hour, so we decided to put them outside to keep while we figured out what we were going to do. We decided to give it a little more time in the oven, and to use that time to portion the sides into the meal prep boxes. Then we brought the casseroles back inside, pulled the bird from the oven and set it to rest, and put the casseroles in the oven. We microwaved the three things that needed microwaving (the stuffing, which we had prepared on the stove top, and was sitting there getting cold, the gravy, and at the last moment the cornbread). After 10 minutes of resting the turkey, we turned the oven off, leaving the casseroles inside to stay warm, and disassembled the drumsticks. Then we served dinner.
After dinner, all ("all") we had to do was cleaning dishes (mostly cycling the dishwasher) and disassembling the turkey (looks like we'll be good for approximately 72 servings of soup), because the meal prep portioning was mostly done. We still have to portion the turkey and the gravy into the meal prep boxes, but that can wait until tomorrow. Likewise cleaning the kitchen can wait until tomorrow. This means we were done before 9:00 p.m. That has not always been the case.
Getting the cooked turkey and prepared sides saved us some work day of (and considerably more work typically done in advance – the green bean casserole, the vegetable sauté that goes into the stuffing) but not perhaps as much as we hoped.
Turns out here's not a lot of time difference between roasting a turkey in the oven and rewarming one. OTOH, we didn't have to wrestle with the raw bird. Also, because we weren't trying to do in-bird stuffing, that's something we just didn't have to deal with. OTOOH, smoked turkey.
But it was still plenty of work. Maybe a better option is roasting regular turkey unstuffed and shaking the effort loose to make green bean casserole and baked stuffing ourselves a day or two ahead. We were already getting commercially made mashed potatoes. It would certainly be cheaper. OTOOH, smoked turkey.
This was our first year rewarming sides in the oven. We usually try to do the microwave, and that proves a bottleneck. This time we used our casserole dishes to simultaneously rewarm four sides, and it was great. Next time we try this approach, something that doesn't slosh as much as the sweet potatoes in syrup goes in the casserole without a lid.
But I think maybe as a good alternative, if we're going to portion sides for meal prep before we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, we might as well just make up two plates, and microwave them in series, instead of troubling with the individual casseroles. This does result in our losing our option for getting seconds, but we never exercise it, and maybe some year we will even have Thanksgiving dessert on the same day that we eat Thanksgiving dinner.
But the thing is, part of the reason we do Thanksgiving dinner ourselves to begin with, is we manage the labor of keeping ourselves fed through meal prepping. And I really love Thanksgiving dinner as a meal. So preparing a Thanksgiving dinner that feeds 16 allows us to have a nice Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving, and then allows us to each have a prepared Thanksgiving dinner every day for another seven days. So this is actually one part family tradition, seven parts meal prep for the following week, and one part getting homemade stock from the carcass and weeks of subsequent soups. If we didn't do Thanksgiving, we'd still have to figure out something to cook for dinners for the week.
The problem is the differential in effort with a regular batch cook.
So this year for Thanksgiving, I proposed, to make it more humane, we avail ourselves of one of the many local prepared to-go Thanksgiving dinner options, where you just have to reheat the food.
We decided to go with a local barbecue joint that offered a smoked turkey. It came in only two sizes: breast only, which was too small for us, and a whole 14 to 16 lb turkey, which is too large, but too large being better than too small, that's what we got.
We also bought their mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and – new to our table this year – baked macaroni and cheese. Also two pints of their gravy, which turned out to be spectacularly good. We also got a pan of their cornbread (also new to our Thanksgiving spread), for which they are justly famous; bizarrely, they left the cornbread off their Thanksgiving menu, but proved happy to add it to our order from the regular catering menu when we called it in.
We used canned sweet potatoes in syrup and grocery store cubed stuffing (Pepperidge Farm). The sweet potatoes were fine but as is traditional I had a disaster which coated half the kitchen in sugar syrup. The stuffing was... adequate. Our big compromise to save ourselves labor was that we didn't do the big stuffing production with the chopped and sauteed fresh veggies. The place we got the prepared sides has a stuffing but it's a cornbread stuffing, which is not the bread cube version I prefer. We did add dried sage to it.
Reheating the wholly cooked smoked turkey did not go great. We followed the vendor's instructions – leave it wrapped in foil, put two cups of water in a bottom of the roasting pan, 300° F for two hours to get the breast meat to 165° F – which turned out to be in Mr B's words, "delusional". We used a pair of probe thermometers with wireless monitor, one in the thigh and one in the breast, and an oven thermometer to make sure the oven was behaving. The oven was flawless. The temperature in the thigh quickly spiked up while the breast heated slowly, such that by an hour in, there was a 50° F difference in temperature between the two. The thigh reached 165 in about 2 and 1/2 hours, at which point the breast was 117 ° F. By my calculations, given how far it had gotten in 2.5 hrs, at that temperature we'd need another hour and a half to get the whole bird up to 165° F (for a grand total of 4 hours) at which point the drumsticks would probably be shoe leather.
There was a brief moment of despair while we entertained heating the turkey for another hour and a half, but then decided to just have dark meat for Thanksgiving.
The turkey turned out to be 1) delicious and 2) enormous. Mr B carved at the rest of the bird for our meal prep and picked the carcass; I broke the carcass and other remains into three batches this year. There is going to be so much soup.
Mr B had the brilliant idea to portion the sides leftovers into the meal prep boxes before the dinner, so we dispensed two servings of each side into the casseroles we were going to warm them in, and portioned out the rest.
I had the brilliant idea of checking the weather and realizing we could use the porch as an auxiliary fridge for all the sides we had sitting there in the crockery waiting for the tardy turkey to be done so they could go in the oven. Also it was wine degrees Fahrenheit out, so that worked great too.
For beverages, Mr B had a beer, and I had iced tea and a glass of wine. Happily, the packie near the caterer's 1) has introduced online shopping for easy pickup, and 2) amazingly, had a wine I have been looking for for something like 20 years, a Sardegnan white called Aragosta, to which I was introduced to by the late lamented Maurizio's in Boston's North End. Why the wine is called "lobster" I do not know, but it is lovely. The online shopping did not work so happily; when we placed the order the day before (Tuesday), we promptly got the email saying that our order was received, but it wasn't placed until we received the confirmation email. Forty minutes before pick up time (Wednesday), since we still hadn't received a confirmation email, Mr B called in and received a well rehearsed apology and explanation that there was a problem with their new website's credit card integration, so orders weren't actually being charged correctly, but to come on down and they would have the order ready for payment at the register.
As is our custom, we also got savory croissants for lunch/breakfast while cooking from the same bakery we also get dessert. As is also our custom, we ate too much Thanksgiving dinner to have room for dessert, and we'll probably eat it tomorrow.
The smoked turkey meat (at least the dark meat) was delicious. I confess I was a little disappointed with the skin. I'm not a huge skin fan in general, but I was hoping the smoked skin would be delicious. But there was some sort of rub on it that had charred in the smoking process, and I don't like the taste of char.
The reason the turkeys I cook wind up so much moister than apparently everybody else's – I've never managed to succeed at making pan gravy, for the simple reason I've never had enough juice in the pan to make gravy, because all the juice is still in the bird – is that I don't care enough about the skin to bother trying to crisp it. There really is a trade-off between moistness of the meat and crispness of the skin, and I'm firmly of the opinion that you can sacrifice the skin in favor of the meat. The skin on this turkey was perfectly crisped all over and whoever had put the rub on it managed to do an astoundingly good job of applying it evenly. It was a completely wasted effort from my point of view, and I'm not surprised that the turkey we got wound up a bit on the dry side.
That said the smokiness was great. I thought maybe, given how strongly flavored the gravy was, it would overpower the smokiness of the meat, but that was not the case and they harmonized really nicely.
The instructions come with a very important warning that the meat is supposed to be that color: pink. It's really quite alarming if you don't know to expect it, I'm sure. You're not normally supposed to serve poultry that color. But the instructions explain in large letters that it is that color because of the smoking process, and it is in fact completely cooked and safe to eat.
(It belatedly occurs to me to wonder whether that pink is actually from the smoke, or whether they treated it with nitrates. You know, what makes bacon pink.)
The cavity was stuffed with oranges and lemons and a bouquet garni, which was a bit of a hassle to clean out of the carcass for its future use as stock.
The green bean casserole was fine. It's not as good as ours, but then we didn't have to cook it. The mac and cheese was really nice; it would never have occurred to me to put rosemary on the top, but that worked really well. The mashed potatoes were very nice mashed potatoes, and the renown cornbread was even better mopping up the gravy.
The best cranberry sauce remains the kind that stands under its own power, is shaped like the can it came in, and is perfectly homogeneous in its texture.
We aimed to get the bird in the oven at 3:00 p.m. (given that the instructions said 2 hours) with the aim of dinner hitting the table at 6:00 p.m. We had a bit of a delay getting the probe thermometers set up and debugged (note to self: make sure they're plugged all the way in) so the bird went in around 3:15 p.m. At 5:15 p.m. no part of the bird was ready. Around 5:45 p.m. the drumsticks reached 165° F, and we realized the majority of it was in not going to get there anytime in the near future. At this point all the sides had been sitting on the counter waiting to go into the oven for over a half an hour, so we decided to put them outside to keep while we figured out what we were going to do. We decided to give it a little more time in the oven, and to use that time to portion the sides into the meal prep boxes. Then we brought the casseroles back inside, pulled the bird from the oven and set it to rest, and put the casseroles in the oven. We microwaved the three things that needed microwaving (the stuffing, which we had prepared on the stove top, and was sitting there getting cold, the gravy, and at the last moment the cornbread). After 10 minutes of resting the turkey, we turned the oven off, leaving the casseroles inside to stay warm, and disassembled the drumsticks. Then we served dinner.
After dinner, all ("all") we had to do was cleaning dishes (mostly cycling the dishwasher) and disassembling the turkey (looks like we'll be good for approximately 72 servings of soup), because the meal prep portioning was mostly done. We still have to portion the turkey and the gravy into the meal prep boxes, but that can wait until tomorrow. Likewise cleaning the kitchen can wait until tomorrow. This means we were done before 9:00 p.m. That has not always been the case.
Getting the cooked turkey and prepared sides saved us some work day of (and considerably more work typically done in advance – the green bean casserole, the vegetable sauté that goes into the stuffing) but not perhaps as much as we hoped.
Turns out here's not a lot of time difference between roasting a turkey in the oven and rewarming one. OTOH, we didn't have to wrestle with the raw bird. Also, because we weren't trying to do in-bird stuffing, that's something we just didn't have to deal with. OTOOH, smoked turkey.
But it was still plenty of work. Maybe a better option is roasting regular turkey unstuffed and shaking the effort loose to make green bean casserole and baked stuffing ourselves a day or two ahead. We were already getting commercially made mashed potatoes. It would certainly be cheaper. OTOOH, smoked turkey.
This was our first year rewarming sides in the oven. We usually try to do the microwave, and that proves a bottleneck. This time we used our casserole dishes to simultaneously rewarm four sides, and it was great. Next time we try this approach, something that doesn't slosh as much as the sweet potatoes in syrup goes in the casserole without a lid.
But I think maybe as a good alternative, if we're going to portion sides for meal prep before we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, we might as well just make up two plates, and microwave them in series, instead of troubling with the individual casseroles. This does result in our losing our option for getting seconds, but we never exercise it, and maybe some year we will even have Thanksgiving dessert on the same day that we eat Thanksgiving dinner.
Nonfiction
Nov. 26th, 2025 01:21 pmrivkatMichael Grunwald, We Are Eating the Earth: The thing about land is that they aren’t making any more of it, and although you can make more farmland (for now) from forests, it’s not a good idea. This means that agriculture is hugely important to climate change, but most of the time proposals for, e.g., biofuels or organic farming don’t take into account the costs in farmland. The book explores various things that backfired because of that failed accounting and what might work in the future. Bonus: the audiobook is narrated by Kevin R. Free, the voice of Murderbot, who turns out to be substantially more expressive when condemning habitat destruction.
Tony Magistrale & Michael J. Blouin, King Noir: The Crime Fiction of Stephen King (feat. Stephen King and Charles Ardai): Treads the scholarly/popular line, as the inclusion of a chapter by King and a “dialogue” with Ardai suggest. The book explores King’s noir-ish work like Joyland, but also considers his horror protagonists as hardboiled detectives, trying to find out why bad things happen (and, in King’s own words, often finding the noirish answer “Because they can.”). I especially liked the reading of Wendy Torrance as a more successful detective than her husband Jack. Richard Bachman shows up as the dark side of King’s optimism (I would have given more attention to the short stories—they’re also mostly from the Bachman era and those often are quite bleak). And the conclusion interestingly explores the near-absence of the (living) big city and the femme fatale—two noir staples—from King’s work, part of a general refusal of fluidity.
Gerardo Con Diaz, Everyone Breaks These Laws: How Copyrights Made the Online World: This book is literally not for me because I live and breathe copyright law and it is a tour through the law of copyright & the internet that is aimed at an intelligent nonlawyer. Although I didn’t learn much, I appreciated lines like “Back then, all my porn was illegally obtained, and it definitely constituted copyright infringement.” The focus is on court cases and the arguments behind them, so the contributions of “user generated content” and, notably, fanworks to the ecosystem don’t get a mention.
Stephanie Burt, Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift: ( longer )
Kyla Sommers, When the Smoke Cleared: The 1968 Rebellions and the Unfinished Battle for Civil Rights in the Nation’s Capital: Extensive account of the lead-up to, experience of, and consequences of the 1968 riots after MLK Jr.’s assassination. There was some interesting stuff about Stokely Carmichael, who (reportedly) told people to go home during the riots because they didn’t have enough guns to win. (Later: “According to the FBI, Carmichael held up a gun and declared ‘tonight bring your gun, don’t loot, shoot.’ The Washington Post, however, reported Carmichael held up a gun and said, ‘Stay off the streets if you don’t have a gun because there’s going to be shooting.’”) Congress did not allow DC to control its own political fate, and that shaped how things happened, including the limited success of citizens’ attempts to direct development and get more control over the police, but ultimately DC was caught up in the larger right-wing backlash that was willing to invest in prisons but not in sustained economic opportunity. Reading it now, I was struct by the fact that—even without riots, fires, or other large-scale destruction—white people who don’t live in the area are still calling for military occupation because they don’t feel safe. So maybe the riots weren’t as causal as they are considered.
Tony Magistrale & Michael J. Blouin, King Noir: The Crime Fiction of Stephen King (feat. Stephen King and Charles Ardai): Treads the scholarly/popular line, as the inclusion of a chapter by King and a “dialogue” with Ardai suggest. The book explores King’s noir-ish work like Joyland, but also considers his horror protagonists as hardboiled detectives, trying to find out why bad things happen (and, in King’s own words, often finding the noirish answer “Because they can.”). I especially liked the reading of Wendy Torrance as a more successful detective than her husband Jack. Richard Bachman shows up as the dark side of King’s optimism (I would have given more attention to the short stories—they’re also mostly from the Bachman era and those often are quite bleak). And the conclusion interestingly explores the near-absence of the (living) big city and the femme fatale—two noir staples—from King’s work, part of a general refusal of fluidity.
Gerardo Con Diaz, Everyone Breaks These Laws: How Copyrights Made the Online World: This book is literally not for me because I live and breathe copyright law and it is a tour through the law of copyright & the internet that is aimed at an intelligent nonlawyer. Although I didn’t learn much, I appreciated lines like “Back then, all my porn was illegally obtained, and it definitely constituted copyright infringement.” The focus is on court cases and the arguments behind them, so the contributions of “user generated content” and, notably, fanworks to the ecosystem don’t get a mention.
Stephanie Burt, Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift: ( longer )
Kyla Sommers, When the Smoke Cleared: The 1968 Rebellions and the Unfinished Battle for Civil Rights in the Nation’s Capital: Extensive account of the lead-up to, experience of, and consequences of the 1968 riots after MLK Jr.’s assassination. There was some interesting stuff about Stokely Carmichael, who (reportedly) told people to go home during the riots because they didn’t have enough guns to win. (Later: “According to the FBI, Carmichael held up a gun and declared ‘tonight bring your gun, don’t loot, shoot.’ The Washington Post, however, reported Carmichael held up a gun and said, ‘Stay off the streets if you don’t have a gun because there’s going to be shooting.’”) Congress did not allow DC to control its own political fate, and that shaped how things happened, including the limited success of citizens’ attempts to direct development and get more control over the police, but ultimately DC was caught up in the larger right-wing backlash that was willing to invest in prisons but not in sustained economic opportunity. Reading it now, I was struct by the fact that—even without riots, fires, or other large-scale destruction—white people who don’t live in the area are still calling for military occupation because they don’t feel safe. So maybe the riots weren’t as causal as they are considered.
Nonfiction
Nov. 25th, 2025 06:13 pmrivkatQuinn Slobodian, Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right: ( it's always racism )
Corinne Low, Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women's Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours: ( self-help from an economist )
Cory Doctorow, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It: ( Doctorow in fine form )
Tim Wu, The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity: ( Another account of enshittification )
Kim A. Wagner, Massacre in the Clouds: An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History: ( written by the victors )
Mary Roach, Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy: ( strange but true )
Corinne Low, Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women's Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours: ( self-help from an economist )
Cory Doctorow, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It: ( Doctorow in fine form )
Tim Wu, The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity: ( Another account of enshittification )
Kim A. Wagner, Massacre in the Clouds: An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History: ( written by the victors )
Mary Roach, Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy: ( strange but true )
Shroud, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Nov. 25th, 2025 11:16 amrunpunkrunA post-Earth society ruled by giant corporations called Concerns whose only goal is to spread vat-grown wage slaves out across the galaxy to exploit resources for profit.
A frozen moon shrouded in eternal darkness and heavy gravity populated by sightless creatures who evolved to live in both.
Like many of Tchaikovsky's novels, this is a story told from two perspectives: the humans whose pod has crashed on a hostile alien planet they can barely make sense of, and the locals who encounter a seemingly idiotic Stranger (a "savant clown beast") that bumbles around, communicates in grunts, and doesn't know enough to come out of the ammonia-methane rain.
The world building and the alien design are, of course, meticulous. The interaction and cobbled together understanding between the humans and the aliens was my favorite part because only the reader knows the full story. Unfortunately the humans, in their duress, aren't all that interesting. The middle sections that focus on them in their pod feel the weakest and, because of that, overlong, but the story picks up again in the last third.
I spent most of the middle in mild agony, thinking there was only one way this story could end, but then I remembered this is Adrian Tchaikovsky, and he doesn't write those kind of stories.
Contains: blood, violence, threat of genocide; no work-life balance.
A frozen moon shrouded in eternal darkness and heavy gravity populated by sightless creatures who evolved to live in both.
Like many of Tchaikovsky's novels, this is a story told from two perspectives: the humans whose pod has crashed on a hostile alien planet they can barely make sense of, and the locals who encounter a seemingly idiotic Stranger (a "savant clown beast") that bumbles around, communicates in grunts, and doesn't know enough to come out of the ammonia-methane rain.
The world building and the alien design are, of course, meticulous. The interaction and cobbled together understanding between the humans and the aliens was my favorite part because only the reader knows the full story. Unfortunately the humans, in their duress, aren't all that interesting. The middle sections that focus on them in their pod feel the weakest and, because of that, overlong, but the story picks up again in the last third.
I spent most of the middle in mild agony, thinking there was only one way this story could end, but then I remembered this is Adrian Tchaikovsky, and he doesn't write those kind of stories.
Contains: blood, violence, threat of genocide; no work-life balance.
3D printing software? [tech]
Nov. 24th, 2025 03:51 pmsidereaI want a widget that doesn't exist so I might be stuck designing it for 3D printing. I have never done this before. For design software, I gather both Onshape and TinkerCAD are available for free. Anybody with experience have opinions which I should start with? I have never used any CAD program before, but am not new to drafting. OTOH my drafting experience was all about 40 years ago. Open to other suggestions available for the Mac for free.
Also, I don't have my own 3D printer, so I'll be availing myself of various public-access options. But this means the iterative design feedback loop will be irritatingly protracted. Also I might have to pay money for each go round, so I'd like to minimize that. Also I am still disabled and not able to spend a lot of time in a makerspace. But I am a complete n00b to 3D printing and have zero idea what I'm doing. Does anybody have any recommendations for good educational references online about how to design for 3D printing so your widget is more likely to come out right the first or at least third time? By which I mean both print right and also function like you wanted – I know basically nothing about working with the material(s) and how they behave and what the various options are, while the widget I want to make will be functional not ornamental and have like tolerances and affordances and stuff. So finding a way to get those clues without hands-on experience, or at least minimizing the hands-on experience would be superb.
Also, I don't have my own 3D printer, so I'll be availing myself of various public-access options. But this means the iterative design feedback loop will be irritatingly protracted. Also I might have to pay money for each go round, so I'd like to minimize that. Also I am still disabled and not able to spend a lot of time in a makerspace. But I am a complete n00b to 3D printing and have zero idea what I'm doing. Does anybody have any recommendations for good educational references online about how to design for 3D printing so your widget is more likely to come out right the first or at least third time? By which I mean both print right and also function like you wanted – I know basically nothing about working with the material(s) and how they behave and what the various options are, while the widget I want to make will be functional not ornamental and have like tolerances and affordances and stuff. So finding a way to get those clues without hands-on experience, or at least minimizing the hands-on experience would be superb.
Fiction
Nov. 24th, 2025 01:43 pmrivkatHugh Howey, Wool: ( underground dystopia )
Stephanie Burgis, Wooing the Witch Queen: ( meet cute )
R.F. Kuang, Katabasis:( hell is other academics )
Qntm, There Is No Antimemetics Division: ( fighting a war you can't remember )
Mia Tsai, The Memory Hunters: ( memory and mushrooms )
John Scalzi, R. F. Kuang, Peng Shepherd, Kaliane Bradley, Olivie Blake, P. Djèlí Clark, The Time Traveler’s Passport: ( short stories )
Francesca Serritella, Ghosts of Harvard: ( ghosts or just mental illness? )
V. E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic: ( world hoppers )
Stephanie Burgis, Wooing the Witch Queen: ( meet cute )
R.F. Kuang, Katabasis:( hell is other academics )
Qntm, There Is No Antimemetics Division: ( fighting a war you can't remember )
Mia Tsai, The Memory Hunters: ( memory and mushrooms )
John Scalzi, R. F. Kuang, Peng Shepherd, Kaliane Bradley, Olivie Blake, P. Djèlí Clark, The Time Traveler’s Passport: ( short stories )
Francesca Serritella, Ghosts of Harvard: ( ghosts or just mental illness? )
V. E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic: ( world hoppers )
Last week, playing catch-up, driving practice
Nov. 24th, 2025 02:10 pmcimoreneLast week I spent all five days out of the house, 9 am to 3 pm, at a course designed to help job seekers. I was hoping for this to be more immediately helpful to me than it was; the last one I went to had time blocks for comparing positives and negatives to decide what kind of places to apply, compiling a list, and creating separate cover letters and CVs, all with counselor feedback; but it lasted longer. These are all things that I know how to do but which are much easier to do with external structure because of executive dysfunction! ( Read more... ) I did not learn much last week, though I did get a few tips about modifying my CV. I found the week surprisingly nice, though - way too draining (I didn't have the energy to do anything else all week), but it was pretty comfortable. I liked the other people and would have been happy to keep seeing them.
After one week where I was too exhausted to do anything, after having been in the habit of near-daily sweeping and vacuuming of the kitchen/dining Sipuli enclosure where I spend the day and Wax sleeps at night, there were a staggering amount of dust bunnies today. I spent a long time sweeping and vacuumed a bit (until the vacuum needed charging). Then I took the rinsed recycling from the draining cupboard where it drips dry, because it was starting to leap out whenever you opened the cabinet door, and I also washed the counters and the sink. That was extremely fun and exciting for Sipuli. She got the zoomies and zipped around sniffing things and warbling at me and playing for a couple of hours. (She is back inside the duvet tent against the radiator now, though.)
A week ago we also finally gave up on the triplets telling us what kind of sweaters they would like (these are their 18th birthday present from last summer: Sweater of Your Choice. I tried spamming them with pictures and suggestions for months. Ciara picked a mariniere and a color combination, but the others didn't even make a peep). We also could not get a response on 'When can we come to your house and measure your teenagers' or 'Could you measure the length and width of a sweatshirt from each of them' from Wax's brother, so we finally just asked for generic size class (M for all three) and then decided to guess. Wax and I picked the patterns and the colors for the two remaining sweaters. She is working on Ciara's sweater and I have started one of the others, and already managed to knit too many hours in a row (in spite of not even having made it down from the neck opening to the underarms yet) so my right shoulder was feeling stiff. So now I'm trying to knit for shorter blocks of time and do other things in between, to avoid hurting myself so badly that I have to stop knitting entirely again.
Due to the aforementioned exhaustion we've only gone out for me to practice driving our car once so far, and I was disconcerted that it was pitch black and I couldn't see the inside of the car. Everything's different, including the gear shift! Driving in daylight in this season will require a little more work though, since the sun is up from about 8-16:30. Wax is working too late this week.
After one week where I was too exhausted to do anything, after having been in the habit of near-daily sweeping and vacuuming of the kitchen/dining Sipuli enclosure where I spend the day and Wax sleeps at night, there were a staggering amount of dust bunnies today. I spent a long time sweeping and vacuumed a bit (until the vacuum needed charging). Then I took the rinsed recycling from the draining cupboard where it drips dry, because it was starting to leap out whenever you opened the cabinet door, and I also washed the counters and the sink. That was extremely fun and exciting for Sipuli. She got the zoomies and zipped around sniffing things and warbling at me and playing for a couple of hours. (She is back inside the duvet tent against the radiator now, though.)
A week ago we also finally gave up on the triplets telling us what kind of sweaters they would like (these are their 18th birthday present from last summer: Sweater of Your Choice. I tried spamming them with pictures and suggestions for months. Ciara picked a mariniere and a color combination, but the others didn't even make a peep). We also could not get a response on 'When can we come to your house and measure your teenagers' or 'Could you measure the length and width of a sweatshirt from each of them' from Wax's brother, so we finally just asked for generic size class (M for all three) and then decided to guess. Wax and I picked the patterns and the colors for the two remaining sweaters. She is working on Ciara's sweater and I have started one of the others, and already managed to knit too many hours in a row (in spite of not even having made it down from the neck opening to the underarms yet) so my right shoulder was feeling stiff. So now I'm trying to knit for shorter blocks of time and do other things in between, to avoid hurting myself so badly that I have to stop knitting entirely again.
Due to the aforementioned exhaustion we've only gone out for me to practice driving our car once so far, and I was disconcerted that it was pitch black and I couldn't see the inside of the car. Everything's different, including the gear shift! Driving in daylight in this season will require a little more work though, since the sun is up from about 8-16:30. Wax is working too late this week.
This is a real place [geog, surrealism]
Nov. 23rd, 2025 05:16 amsidereaSaw this, blew my mind, thought I'd share. Behold, Lençóis Maranhenses:
2025 Oct 28: PBS Terra [pbsterra on YT]: It Looks Like a Desert. But It Has Thousands of Lakes
When I heard in the video how big it was, I turned on satellite view in Google Maps and popped "Lençóis Maranhenses" into the search bar:
( Image below cut. Content advisory: trypophobes avoid )
2025 Oct 28: PBS Terra [pbsterra on YT]: It Looks Like a Desert. But It Has Thousands of Lakes
When I heard in the video how big it was, I turned on satellite view in Google Maps and popped "Lençóis Maranhenses" into the search bar:
( Image below cut. Content advisory: trypophobes avoid )
SGA: Born Under a Bad Sign by Brumeier
Nov. 23rd, 2025 09:10 pmmific posting in fancakeFandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Evan Lorne, Radek Zelenka, Laura Cadman
Rating: Teen
Length: 7984
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: Brumeier on AO3
Themes: Mystery and suspense, Psychic powers, Friends to lovers, Complete AU: law enforcement
Summary: Rodney had thought the worst part of his day was coming home from the office and finding a dead man in his living room. He was wrong. But the investigation brought him and John together, and that's when things really got interesting.
Reccer's Notes: This is an engaging story in which Rodney's the head of his own tech company and John's a psychic with clairvoyance and precognitition who works with Lorne, a detective. They get called in when Rodney finds a dead stranger in his apartment, leading to an investigation. The story revolves around Rodney's reactions to John's abilities (mistrust gradually changing to fascination), all while being attracted to him. John is troubled, mostly seeing death and being able to locate killers, after being traumatised by his mother's death. Until he meets Rodney! :D It's romantic, with an interesting plot - an excellent read.
Fanwork Links: Born Under a Bad Sign
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Evan Lorne, Radek Zelenka, Laura Cadman
Rating: Teen
Length: 7984
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: Brumeier on AO3
Themes: Mystery and suspense, Psychic powers, Friends to lovers, Complete AU: law enforcement
Summary: Rodney had thought the worst part of his day was coming home from the office and finding a dead man in his living room. He was wrong. But the investigation brought him and John together, and that's when things really got interesting.
Reccer's Notes: This is an engaging story in which Rodney's the head of his own tech company and John's a psychic with clairvoyance and precognitition who works with Lorne, a detective. They get called in when Rodney finds a dead stranger in his apartment, leading to an investigation. The story revolves around Rodney's reactions to John's abilities (mistrust gradually changing to fascination), all while being attracted to him. John is troubled, mostly seeing death and being able to locate killers, after being traumatised by his mother's death. Until he meets Rodney! :D It's romantic, with an interesting plot - an excellent read.
Fanwork Links: Born Under a Bad Sign
Broken public health appointment system part 3
Nov. 21st, 2025 10:13 amcimoreneIn Non-functional public health appointments, part 2, we heard that when I called on the one day (out of 2 weeks) when you can book appointments with an MD, the appointments were all filled well before the end of the day and they told me to call back in 2 weeks as early as possible.
So that was Monday, and I called at 8:05 (5 minutes after opening) and put my message in their automatic callback queue. I didn't get called until after 11:00 and I could hear the receptionist's voice trembling with stress as she tried to gently and politely apologize because "It was so good that you called at eight, but unfortunately all the doctor slots were already full again!"
She asked again how soon I will run out of meds, and since I will not run out in the next two weeks, she told me to try calling back at eight am again on December first.
!!!!!!!
"Really really sorry, it's so unfortunate."
"Well, it's not your fault, I know," I said.
"Even so... yeah."
So. Two weeks. If I call at 8 on the dot, maybe I'll be early enough in the queue... or maybe I can't get an appointment until I'm about to run out and they therefore have to promote me to the 'urgent' (or semi-urgent) queue.
Wow... I'm so mad about this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remember that this was actually my third call because the first time I didn't call on the Appointment Day at all and had to be redirected (but unfortunately, even though she said they might fill up, I didn't realize it was like, CALL WITHIN FIVE MINUTES).
So that was Monday, and I called at 8:05 (5 minutes after opening) and put my message in their automatic callback queue. I didn't get called until after 11:00 and I could hear the receptionist's voice trembling with stress as she tried to gently and politely apologize because "It was so good that you called at eight, but unfortunately all the doctor slots were already full again!"
She asked again how soon I will run out of meds, and since I will not run out in the next two weeks, she told me to try calling back at eight am again on December first.
!!!!!!!
"Really really sorry, it's so unfortunate."
"Well, it's not your fault, I know," I said.
"Even so... yeah."
So. Two weeks. If I call at 8 on the dot, maybe I'll be early enough in the queue... or maybe I can't get an appointment until I'm about to run out and they therefore have to promote me to the 'urgent' (or semi-urgent) queue.
Wow... I'm so mad about this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remember that this was actually my third call because the first time I didn't call on the Appointment Day at all and had to be redirected (but unfortunately, even though she said they might fill up, I didn't realize it was like, CALL WITHIN FIVE MINUTES).
Getting a head of things [gastronomy]
Nov. 21st, 2025 03:09 amsidereaThe Bostoniensis household's last grocery order included some cucumbers but the delivery service mystifyingly substituted for them a head of cabbage. They were very apologetic when Mr B called to complain, and refunded us the price of the cabbage, so now it's a free cabbage. But it's still here taking up a remarkably large volume of space in our fridge, what with the spherical thing, and it's a week before Thanksgiving.
Cooking a cabbage was not on our plans for this week. But throwing out a perfectly good cabbage seems sad. And I have been complaining about not getting enough veggies to eat. So.
Anybody have a very delicious recipe for cabbage that conforms to the following parameters?:
• Cooked. No raw cabbage.
• Really, really low effort. I am resigned to having to chop the cabbage itself, but maybe minimal other chopping of other veggies or meats. Something where the actual cooking isn't too fussy.
• Not haluski. We love haluski. We have most of the ingredients for haluski. We do not have the time or energy for taking on a project like haluski.
• Not stuffed cabbage. The kind with ground beef and tomato sauce. Neither of us likes it. Possibly because we don't like the taste of cabbage in tomato sauce.
• Not corned beef and cabbage. We love corned beef and cabbage but omg have you seen the price of brisket.
• Relately, maybe no stewing or slow cooking? The smell of slow cooking the corned beef and cabbage is dire, and we don't want to have to flush air we paid to heat. Maybe it would be okay if more heavily seasoned.
• Gotta mostly be cabbage. We have a lot of cabbage to get through.
We like spicy, though it's not required; no cilantro, and probably no coconut. Main dish or side, with meat or without.
Edit: Okay, maybe we'll just buy more cabbages. I am very excited by this harvest of recipes.
Cooking a cabbage was not on our plans for this week. But throwing out a perfectly good cabbage seems sad. And I have been complaining about not getting enough veggies to eat. So.
Anybody have a very delicious recipe for cabbage that conforms to the following parameters?:
• Cooked. No raw cabbage.
• Really, really low effort. I am resigned to having to chop the cabbage itself, but maybe minimal other chopping of other veggies or meats. Something where the actual cooking isn't too fussy.
• Not haluski. We love haluski. We have most of the ingredients for haluski. We do not have the time or energy for taking on a project like haluski.
• Not stuffed cabbage. The kind with ground beef and tomato sauce. Neither of us likes it. Possibly because we don't like the taste of cabbage in tomato sauce.
• Not corned beef and cabbage. We love corned beef and cabbage but omg have you seen the price of brisket.
• Relately, maybe no stewing or slow cooking? The smell of slow cooking the corned beef and cabbage is dire, and we don't want to have to flush air we paid to heat. Maybe it would be okay if more heavily seasoned.
• Gotta mostly be cabbage. We have a lot of cabbage to get through.
We like spicy, though it's not required; no cilantro, and probably no coconut. Main dish or side, with meat or without.
Edit: Okay, maybe we'll just buy more cabbages. I am very excited by this harvest of recipes.
Health: COVID symptom whack-a-mole?
Nov. 20th, 2025 02:46 amelisem tl:dr Silly body is silly.
I continue resting LIKE A POTATO.
Whatever's going on in there, COVID (or something) has apparently been playing with the sliders and the lit-up buttons on my disabilities and chronic ailments. The good leg because the bad leg for several days. Really bad, pain-wise. Now that seems to be easing up a lot. The bad leg is doing something with sensations on the part of the leg where some nerve rerouting/regrowth happened after surgery 16 years ago; I did not need it to play with pins-and-needles, burning, freezing, and shocks on that leg below the replaced hip. Also, the sudden decrease in my hearing was distressing, though that seems to be mostly back where it was now.
Am using what skills I have to treat everything as temporary, and not decide This Is How It Will Be From Here On Out. (Fibromyalgia has a ton of temporary things happening, at least for me, that seem like a Big Deal and then suddenly shift or go away.)
So yeah, silly body is silly.
Not as much pain in the temporarily bad leg today, so that is a huge win. I'll take it.
Does your body ever tell you something like "Augh, my toe is broken!" and then go "just foolin'! It's fine!" a while later?
I continue resting LIKE A POTATO.
Whatever's going on in there, COVID (or something) has apparently been playing with the sliders and the lit-up buttons on my disabilities and chronic ailments. The good leg because the bad leg for several days. Really bad, pain-wise. Now that seems to be easing up a lot. The bad leg is doing something with sensations on the part of the leg where some nerve rerouting/regrowth happened after surgery 16 years ago; I did not need it to play with pins-and-needles, burning, freezing, and shocks on that leg below the replaced hip. Also, the sudden decrease in my hearing was distressing, though that seems to be mostly back where it was now.
Am using what skills I have to treat everything as temporary, and not decide This Is How It Will Be From Here On Out. (Fibromyalgia has a ton of temporary things happening, at least for me, that seem like a Big Deal and then suddenly shift or go away.)
So yeah, silly body is silly.
Not as much pain in the temporarily bad leg today, so that is a huge win. I'll take it.
Does your body ever tell you something like "Augh, my toe is broken!" and then go "just foolin'! It's fine!" a while later?
The Hunter, by Tana French
Nov. 19th, 2025 08:55 amrunpunkrunThis follows The Seeker, and I enjoyed it even more than the first book. That one was all Cal, who is still solving a lot of his problems with his fists, but here Lena and Trey provide an interesting balance to Cal's blunt force approach. French builds on the events of the first book, drawing out the tension between the characters, where even the most innocuous of conversations between the villagers are filled with hidden meaning and layered with unspoken threats as they seek out peace, safety, and revenge.
The third book in this series is expected next March, and I look forward to reading it.
Contains: Child harm; dog harm; violence (both interpersonal and mob); fire.
The third book in this series is expected next March, and I look forward to reading it.
Contains: Child harm; dog harm; violence (both interpersonal and mob); fire.
Choosing Health Insurance: Preventive Care [US, healthcare, Patreon]
Nov. 19th, 2025 05:52 amsidereaCanonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1886696.html
Hey, Americans and other people stuck in the American healthcare system. It's open enrollment on the state exchanges, and possibly through your employer, so I wanted to give you a little heads up about preventive care and shopping for a health insurance plan.
I've noticed from time to time various health insurance companies advertising themselves to consumers by boasting that their health plans focus on covering preventive care. Maybe they lay a spiel on you about how they believe in keeping you healthy rather than trying to fix problems after they happen. Maybe they point out in big letters "PREVENTIVE CARE 100% FREE" or "NO CO-PAYS FOR PREVENTIVE CARE".
When you come across a health insurance product advertised this way, promoted for its coverage of preventive health, I propose you should think of that as a bad thing.
Why? Do I think preventive medicine is a bad thing? Yes, actually, but that's a topic for another post. For purposes of this post, no, preventive medicine is great.
It's just that it's illegal for them not to cover preventive care 100% with no copays or other cost-sharing.
Yeah, thanks to the Obamacare law, the ACA, it's literally illegal for a health plan to be sold on the exchanges if it doesn't cover preventive care 100% with no cost-sharing, and while there are rare exceptions, it's also basically illegal for an employer to offer a health plan that doesn't cover preventive care.
They can't not, and neither can any of their competitors.
( So any health plan that's bragging on covering preventive care?.... Read more [2,270 words] )
This post brought to you by the 220 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
Hey, Americans and other people stuck in the American healthcare system. It's open enrollment on the state exchanges, and possibly through your employer, so I wanted to give you a little heads up about preventive care and shopping for a health insurance plan.
I've noticed from time to time various health insurance companies advertising themselves to consumers by boasting that their health plans focus on covering preventive care. Maybe they lay a spiel on you about how they believe in keeping you healthy rather than trying to fix problems after they happen. Maybe they point out in big letters "PREVENTIVE CARE 100% FREE" or "NO CO-PAYS FOR PREVENTIVE CARE".
When you come across a health insurance product advertised this way, promoted for its coverage of preventive health, I propose you should think of that as a bad thing.
Why? Do I think preventive medicine is a bad thing? Yes, actually, but that's a topic for another post. For purposes of this post, no, preventive medicine is great.
It's just that it's illegal for them not to cover preventive care 100% with no copays or other cost-sharing.
Yeah, thanks to the Obamacare law, the ACA, it's literally illegal for a health plan to be sold on the exchanges if it doesn't cover preventive care 100% with no cost-sharing, and while there are rare exceptions, it's also basically illegal for an employer to offer a health plan that doesn't cover preventive care.
They can't not, and neither can any of their competitors.
( So any health plan that's bragging on covering preventive care?.... Read more [2,270 words] )
This post brought to you by the 220 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
