Sound interest

No one is having a good time.

The OTHER project was going to destroy rare salamander habitat and so we had to buy some appropriate habitat. But every mitigation bank was sold out. I found a guy selling future mitigation bank credits through the powers of making a lot of phone calls and then, through the power of polite requests, got our Wildlife Agency rep to sign off on this plan. Except. You can’t say “I gave seven figures to a guy who promises to someday make habitat”, that guy could abscond. You also can’t be like “I supes promise to pay for mitigation AFTER the project.” because WE could not pay out. We were, for various reasons, disinclined to delay the project. The Wildlife Agency rep — bless her, she really held my hand through this whole process — was like “how about you put the money in escrow?” Great. A plan.

So I call an escrow company — which was not an organization used to being cold-called, much less by someone standing next to an excavator, covered in mud. I was trying to provide only the information needed to enable success and NOT go on a five-ten minute rant on salamander life cycles. Also I was DEEPLY out of my depth.

“Hi! I was wondering if you could hold money in an escrow account for a longer period?”

“… Well, in some circumstances we can hold it for up to 90 days — but we’d need to know the circumstances.”

“Ah! I need someone to hold it for up to two years? Do you know of any companies who’d be able to help me?”

“What. What is happening with the house that this is necessary?”

“Oh uh. It’s not a house, per se, it’s a rare salamander mitigation bank. It needs to be built.”

“The salamanders need a custom house?”

“No no no no no uh. They need a pond. We’re paying someone to make a pond. But! They need time to make the pond. Hence the escrow account. So. Who could?”

“So like a lizard house?”

“They are amphibians?”

“Let me. Transfer you to my supervisor.”

<after a pause a different person comes on the line but also unfortunately at this moment the excavator operator fishes a turtle out of the ditch.>

“Hi! Sorry one second I need to put down the phone to help a turtle.” <interlude> “Thank you so much for waiting! I’m back! Can you talk to me about escrow options?”

“What was happening with the turtle?”

“Oh it was trapped in some cattails but I got it out. Sorry for putting down the phone — you need both hands to grab them because they bite! I need an escrow account to hold funds for up to two years?”

“For a house for lizards? Are you a zoo?”

“Ah! Salamanders, actually! And a mitigation bank, not a house. I actually work for X organization.”

“What is a mitigation bank?” (The critical question!)

“Oh when you’re building something and need to impact some rare species habitat you can pay someone to make new rare species habitat.”

“Huh.”

“But this habitat is incomplete! It doesn’t have a pond. So my organization won’t pay until AAAAAAAAA excuse me sorry I fell into a ditch. My organization needs there to be a pond there before they pay for the property. So one path forward is an escrow account.”

“Are you OK?”

“Yes absolutely!”

“What’s the cost of this bank?”

“Two million dollars.”

<the tenor of the conversation became markedly warmer at this point.>

“OK if you get my your contact information then I’ll email you some options and then we can discuss — do you have time now?”

“Unfortunately I do not have email access right this second. Also I need to get out of the ditch. Could we put a pin in this conversation and circle back tomorrow?”

“Of course, I look forward to working with your organization?”

“Thank you so much!”

“Good luck with the. Ditch. And turtles?”

In seriousness, this is oklch.com, a color picker for the OKLCH color model.

There are whole several hour lectures one could take in color science and theory, but to keep it short: the set of colors we can see, the set of colors monitors can display, and the set of colors computers can model are three circles that only somewhat overlap.

In this case, if I wanted this color

but in red, I could just go of Photoshop and move over the hue slider, getting this as a result:

Which is.. acceptable, but not as "bright" and "vibrant" as the green I had. Looking at the graphs in the OKLCH color picker, we can figure out why:

It tells us that a red with the same luminosity and chroma as this green is out of gamut—that is, it cannot be displayed by this monitor.

In this case, you can use the edges of the graph to find the color that is closest to what you want. You can, for example, keep the chroma but sacrifice lightness,

keep the lightness but drop the chroma,

or a bit of both, which is what the common HSV triangles already do.

What if what *I* see as blue, *you* see as a slightly different blue because you're using Chrome instead of Firefox and despite a decade of messing with profiles we STILL can't get this right somehow.

Today this woman called our information desk and said, “my son’s band is playing tonight. I want to come see him, but he never answers his phone…..I want to be there. Have you heard anything about his band?”

And I felt so bad for this lady but I’m not in the music scene around here so I had to tell her no, sorry.

Five hours later, I’m hiking and run into a group of guys setting up for some outdoor performance, and as I watch them unload the drums it hits me.

“Hey,” I said, “are y’all in a band?”

They said yeah and smiled and I told them “one of your moms called today. She wants to watch you play, but she can’t get a hold of you. Call your mom.”

And they all pulled out their phones and started discussing whose mom it probably was as they presumably dialed their own.

And now, unless we meet again and recognize each other, that’s who I’ll be forever to those guys–some mysterious courier for mom-messages who came out of the woods and told them their mom called.

I didn’t even tell them why their mom called me. Who am I to their mom?? Nobody even asked. They just took my word for it and called their mothers.

Purrcussion

every three months he'll post and in the author's note there's some shit like "sorry this took a while, i got shot seven times :/" or "i know it's been a minute, i literally got hit by a bus and then stabbed in the leg, but i'm all good!" or sometimes ned would log in and post with a note "hey i'm a friend posting on the author's behalf, they're healing from severe hypothermia but promised an update, so here it is!"

and the fic just gets increasingly more popular for the author notes alone. a good handful of the comments are something along the lines of "i'm not even in the star wars fandom, i'm just here to see if the author is good" or "every update i cheer for another day the author gets to live at this point"

and any reader who is a native new yorker kind of pieces together that holy shit the author might be spider-man because the timeline adds up, and they just fully embrace it. spider-man will stop a robbery and the guy behind the counter will ask when the next chapter will be up. spider-man returns a stolen backpack to a girl and she'll tell him that he "really got poe's voice down so well, it's really impressive."

ned thinks it is hilarious. mj finds out about the fic from twitter, to peter's absolute horror, and changes peter's contact name to "friendly neighborhood ao3 author". but the worst thing to happen is after an avengers battle where peter took a pretty big hit and ends up in med-bay. and during a press conference, when someone asks how spider-man is healing, tony just drops "spidey won't be down for too long. the star wars fic will be updated within the week, probably."

So the Epic Bookbinding project has finally at home with its author, and I can share photos.

About a year ago, I decided I wanted to try a big project, and I chose to bind the entirety of @flawedamythyst ’s series Seduction by Winglet. (MCU/Cabin Pressure crossover with a central pairing of Tony Stark/Martin Crieff. It is exactly as cracky and wonderful as it sounds.) The entire series is over 300,000 words long, if you include the AU offshoots (and I did), and resulted in nine separate volumes of text.

Which I duplicated, because I wanted a copy of my own, too.

(That’s eighteen books, friends. So when I say a big project, I mean it.)

One of the main character’s favorite planes is a Spitfire, and he will often turn to a specific Spitfire’s pilot manual when he is in need of comfort reading. I couldn’t find pictures of that manual, but most of the WW2-era Spitfire manuals had the same sort of look to them, so I decided I wanted the books to resemble that design. I went with a quatro size because the books are easy enough to handle, but small enough to fit in a pilot’s pocket (very handy, if you’re operating a plane in wartime conditions). On the left, an actual Spitfire pilot’s manual;  on the right, my cover:

(Yeah, that’s an old pic, I did change the bottom text a bit.) The covers were printed on cream-colored heather paper, slightly heavier weight than normal so hopefully they’ll stand up to more handling. The color choice was deliberate; I’ll get to that in a moment.

The interior of the books was pretty standard, but I do want to point out a couple things I’m inordinately pleased by:

The first is art I included in Volume 6 of Tony in his Iron Man suit buzzing Martin’s plane. (Source: here.) I used it as endpapers for that volume, though now I kinda wish I’d used it in all the volumes. The art is by @yutaya and used with their permission; please go heap love onto her if you like it.

As always, I had fun with the not-for-sale-or-resale warning.

(That’s the Latverian stamp, btw. And fake coffee cup stains. I am such a nerd.)

So for those who don’t know, the little tip on the end of some airplane wingspans goes up at a specific angle—that’s a winglet. The reason the series is called “Seduction by Winglet” is because Tony and Martin initially bond over their love of airplane design and specifically, the winglets Tony added to one of his jets. So I included a winglet on the title page, too:

(The lines are much smoother in the actual book, though the variegated does look cool, doesn’t it? I have no idea if that’s a good angle for aviation. Hush.)

I also included airplanes as scene breaks:

I also had fun with typeset. There’s a couple of places where Tony and Martin leave notes for each other. I decided I wanted the notes to resemble handwriting. Obviously we don’t know what Tony or Martin’s handwriting would look like, but an old fanfic author trick is if you don’t know something about a character (such as height or eye color), you turn to the actor who portrays them. So I looked up handwriting samples for Robert Downey Jr & Benedict Cumberbatch (yeah, I know, stalkery vibes going on there), and found a couple fonts that more or less matched them, but were different enough from each other that a reader wouldn’t be mixed up.

So now we’ll go onto the covers. As I said earlier, I wanted them to resemble the Spitfire pilots’ manuals from WW2. That meant keeping everything very simple and basic—which was fine by me, since I was already looking at a hell of a lot of work. Instead of bookboard, I went with a much lighter-weight cardboard (specifically, cereal boxes—we ate a lot of Cheerios for this project).

Now, color choices. The actual pilots manuals came in several color ranges, usually blue or red, and from what I saw online, were perfect-bound with paper covers with either a paper or bookcloth spine. I went with hand-bound “hardcover” with the light-weight cardboard, as said before, and used paper for the cover and back, and a bookcloth for the spine, because I do want these to stand up to regular reading, so this would give them some sturdiness but also make them easy to hold and handle.

I also chose a burgundy bookcloth for the spine and an antique gold color for the paper cover, because I was trying to pull in the Iron Man colors. (So much of the book’s design is for Martin, after all, and I didn’t want to leave Tony out entirely.)

Now, for the part I’m proudest of: the spine. Wanna see it? You wanna see it. It’s so cool. Here’s all nine books in the set, in their slipcase:

OH YEAH, BABY, THAT’S A SPITFIRE.

(And also another winglet at the bottom, because I am a glutton for Cricut punishment.)

SO. This took at least four trips to the library’s crafting hour to get right, because first I cut the Spitfires too small (but that’s okay, I gave the misprints to someone and she’s using them in her kid’s room) and then I messed up the Number 3 four times, and I couldn’t figure out how the hell I was gonna get them all lined up properly without losing my mind, and then I came up with THIS brilliant scheme.

(Feel free to imagine Arthur saying Brilliant, because trust me, I sure as hell did.)

So I took a piece of paper, marked out the exact width of every volume, all lined up in order. Using the sticky plastic bit from the Iron-On vinyl, I stuck the plane down on the paper, as well as the winglet lines and numbers, into their specific positions.

And then I just… cut along the lines marking out each volume. TA-DA. Perfectly placed plane and winglets, ready for transfer to the appropriate volume.

And now, lastly but certainly not leastly: the slipcase. With all nine volumes of the set done, I could turn to this last trick up my sleeve. Putting together the box was fine, I was pleased with how  that turned out and I will certainly be making more of them.

But I also wanted to show you the inside of the box. Because no Cabin Pressure fic is complete without…

Traveling lemons. 😊

"As climate change continues to rear its destructive, uncertain head, canine companions are playing a vital role.

There are conservation dogs sniffing out invasive species in nature preserves, helping to clean contaminated waterways, and even avalanche rescue dogs that save people in the great outdoors.

Most of these dogs are bred for greatness and train their whole puppyhood to work in these roles.

But a recent study from Virginia Tech wondered: Can everyday dogs do the same?

In the study, Virginia Tech conducted a first-of-its-kind experiment to see if citizen dog-handler teams can achieve species detection rates comparable to those of professional conservation dogs.

Over 1,000 dog owners expressed interest in the study, with more than 40% of them having prior experience in sport scent detection or other related activities.

Sport scent detection is a recreational activity in which dogs find hidden scents in training classes, and sometimes, competitions.

Ultimately, the researchers selected 182 canine-citizen teams across the U.S. to participate in their trial to see if everyday people and pets could effectively detect the “elusive” egg masses of the spotted lanternfly.

To eradicate the threat, it’s important to catch the egg masses early, but according to the study’s co-author, Mizuho Nita, “finding them is like searching for a needle in a haystack.”

With their keen sense of smell, dogs can be trained to sniff out the egg masses without disturbing the environment. Professional detection dogs do this with high accuracy, but there are not nearly enough of them to tackle the mounting concern of the invasive species, an article for the university explained.

“What if we tapped into the tens of thousands of dog owners already doing scent detection as a hobby around the country?” the researchers asked. 

So, with 182 citizen scientists and their furry friends on board, researchers provided them with “devitalized” or non-hatching egg masses as a training aid. The participants trained their dogs at home or in small groups with the help of a local trainer to learn how to identify the invasive species.

“Anytime you can stimulate your dog, it’s good for them,” participant Bill Wellborn said, of his 7-year-old Tibetan terrier, Pepe.

“Pepe obviously enjoys it. And it’s a way we can take dog skills and training to help our community.”

Wellborn and Pepe — and the other participating teams — worked in sessions multiple days a week for several months, with dogs eventually tested in two environments. 

In a controlled indoor environment, the dogs had to complete an odor recognition test, in which they identified the box with the spotted lanternfly egg masses from multiple boxes with other items and scents.

The dogs that passed this test then advanced to a field test outdoors, where they were required to find the same scent outside, with other competing smells.

They correctly identified the egg masses 82% of the time in the controlled tests and 61% of the time in field trials. Although the field test number dropped, it’s still a better score than human-only searches.

“These teams demonstrated that citizen scientists and their dogs can play a meaningful role in protecting agriculture and the environment from invasive species,” Sally Dickinson, the study’s lead author, said in a statement.

“With proper training, dog owners can turn their pets into powerful partners for conservation.” 

For the dogs that passed both tests, 92% were successful in finding live egg masses with minimal extra training, according to the researchers.

“There are thousands of people out there doing scent work with their dogs just for fun,” Erica Feuerbacher, an animal behaviorist and a co-author on the study, said. 

“What Sally’s study shows is that this can be more than a hobby — these citizen-scientists and their dogs can be a valuable resource for fighting the spread of an invasive pest.”

The dog handlers agree.

“Being able to do the same thing for the greater good — for citizen science — adds another layer we didn’t have before,” Katie Thomas, a participant, shared about her pit bull mix, Finch.

And now, with a proven concept, the future is bright for dog owners who want to bond with their pets and do a little more good.

“This research is about more than detection,” Dickinson concluded. “It’s about empowering people to work alongside their dogs to protect the places and communities they care about.”

Northern Cardinal, 4/10

I'm sometimes worried the male is sexually harassing the female but I'm pretty sure they're just doing some elaborate public pickup roleplay. The rest of us didn't agree to participate in your kink, guys.

American Robin, 1/10

Literally just some dude hanging out. Never bothered anyone but worms. Big fan of the way you just stand there in the middle of the grass like you forgot what you were supposed to be doing.

House Sparrow, 10/10

You're a gang. You're participating in gang violence. There's ten billion of you living in a single wood pile and it's been civil war for three years now. When will the bloodshed end?

Tufted Titmouse, 1/10

A shy baby. A pretty little guy. I saw you on the neighbor's garage roof and time stopped. There were anime sparkles around you. Come back.

European Starling, 9/10

Why is it always you? Listen, I know, I KNOW the sparrows are the problem, and YET. When the fighting starts, it's always you in the middle of it, provoking them and then screaming like you're an innocent bystander defending yourself. I'm onto you.

Carolina Wren, 3/10

This rating is not for physical violence, which you don't engage in, but for your role as an incurable narc. A tattle tale. I know they're fighting again, okay? I see it. Our yard has been a warzone for years, you don't have to make a big announcement every time someone misbehaves.

Eastern Wood-Peewee, 0/10

If this were "birds who think they're better than everyone else," you'd get 10/10.

Red-bellied Woodpecker, 6/10

It's a utility pole. It's not a tree. You're surrounded by trees that are full of bugs. But there you are, on the utility pole. Committing vandalism.

American Crow, unrated

For who am I to cast judgment on the actions of La Famiglia? I assume you are doing what is best for the neighborhood. If I could, though, without criticism, make a single observation. That when large numbers of you gather in the ominous dead cottonwood - no? No, you're right. None of my business.

Great Crested Flycatcher, 5/10

Frankly, I think you could be doing more. I think your name implies a great potential. I think you should massacre the insects. I think your beak should drip with viscera.

Common Grackle, 7/10

La Famiglia does not suffer you to stop in our neighborhood long, and I trust their judgement in this manner. You have the look of a guilty bird.

Tennessee Warbler, 2/10

You keep to yourselves, and I respect that. I get the sense that you could defend yourselves if it came to it, though.

Brown-Headed Cowbird, 3/10

You're not a crow, and eventually they ARE going to figure it out, kiddo.

Gray Catbird, 5/10

Would you. Respectfully. Would you shut the FUCK UP.

Eurasian Collared-Dove, 0/10

You're doing great, sweetie, everyone loves you.

Red-Breasted Nuthatch, 4/10

A comedian. A little jester of a bird. You're so silly. Sure sometimes you incite violence in others but, really, is that your fault? If it is, we forgive you.

Blue Jay, 12/10

If you could learn any human behavior you wanted, it would be how to build a bomb.

Honorable mention:

Turkey Vulture, 5/10

Had a minute at work to look it up, and I did find the title!

I befriended a feral cat once who had spent her life in the forest without human interaction. I was worried about her because she had a paw damaged from an old injury and was emaciated but obviously nursing kittens that were hidden away somewhere. It took me weeks of putting out food and sitting across the yard every evening for her to trust me even a little and when she decided we were friends and she expected dinner every night she started coming to my door and trying to call for me in the evening, but she didn’t meow. Why would she? Cats only meow naturally as kittens when their vocal chords/ears aren’t fully developed, adult cats communicate with vocalizations that aren’t audible to humans. She probably tried making noises I couldn’t hear to call me but ended up sticking to the one I always responded to- a horrible yowling growl that she had made at me when we first encountered each other in the forest. Except once we were friends she would make this noise while purring and rubbing affectionately against a nearby tree or the porch railing (because she didn’t want to touch me yet). This understandably freaked my family members out but I was touched that she had taken the time to find a way to basically yell FUCK OFF in an affectionate way.

Fast forward to when she finally trusts me enough to bring her hidden kittens out of the forest to me, long story short I gained their trust and put them in this big pen, that I had previously used to keep chickens in, so they’d be safe and to keep her from having another litter. Except she was already secretly pregnant again! (Fix your pets, guys, they make SO many babies) and ended up having her new babies in this pen. I kept my distance, sitting on the outside once they were born until she seemed comfortable enough to let me come inside. The kittens were a bit wild, hissing viscously at me as soon as they opened their eyes, but they warmed up to me. There were four of them and soon they all wanted to be the center of attention during the twice daily play sessions. I’d be playing with one and another would meow insistently behind me and I’d immediately answer them and give them love, teaching them that humans could be friends that answer their needs- making them adoptable once they were weaned. Mama cat (Artie) would just watch me play with them, and I guess she was doing some thinking because one day when they were about a month old I was playing with them and one meowed behind me. I was confused because I hadn’t realized there was a kitten behind me and when I turned, there wasn’t. The only cat there was Artie looking at me really intensely. I turned back around to the kittens and I heard the meow again, I turned back to Artie and responded in the way I always did with the kittens “yes baby?” And she meowed again in an exact imitation of her kittens! After that she would.not.shut.up. It was like she had cracked some kind of code, meowing for attention and snacks and just to say hi. Her two older kittens, the ones she’d had in the forest, had never meowed at me either but started to once they saw how I responded to their mom. and I find it endlessly fascinating because before that it had never occurred to me that cats only meow at humans because they were taught by other cats to keep meowing past kittenhood because that’s the best way to get a human’s attention.

And when i notice one of them my eyes will always start to roll.

The diction's always slurry when they rush the complicated words, and adding many fricatives will turn it so cacophonous. The slanted rhymes are silly and they keep just making more and more, please someone stop the parodies of modern major general.

I've been helping friends who host NSFW content on Google Docs with backing up and migrating off it, so I figured I could share that here.

1: Facts about Google Docs banning/removing NSFW content

They've always done this, actually. It isn't new, although they do go through periods where they get more stinky about it. If you really look at their terms and conditions, they tell you that while they won't interfere with NSFW content in private files, they do reserve the right to meddle when you make that file public/share the link. The words are "you may not DISTRIBUTEadult content via GoogleDocs."

So when you enable a shared link on a file, like below, you're considered to be 'distributing' it. 

As a side note, this also makes that file fair game to be fed into their AI training. 

As far as I understand, sharing a file with a specific other account or several--such as editors or co-authors--does not count as public distribution.

More on how to protect yourself, back up your files and alternative services under the cut.

For adults, the appeal is Sir Patrick Stewart doing a kid’s educational bit in full Shakespearean dress and style; there’s a delightful cognitive dissonance between the very serious presentation and the very simple content.

For very small children, it’s educational: this is the letter “B”; here’s how it’s shaped; here’s some words you know that start with it. Oh, and here’s a word you may not be familiar with that starts with it, so you can recognize that it’s the sound that matters, and not whatever other connection you made between the other two words.

For older kids: you’ve probably heard that “to be or not to be?” speech, or at least part of it, so you can enjoy some of the parody the adults are watching. Also, here’s how to describe how a letter is made - how to teach young siblings who don’t read yet, how to explain both the shape and the sound.

For kids with dyslexia: here’s how you differentiate a “B” from a P or D or E. You may have to go slowly and look carefully at the exact shapes that make up the whole, but there are differences and you can learn to recognize them. 

For teens or young college students: In addition to whichever parts of those are relevant to you, here’s what Shakespearean acting sounds like. Here’s how to enunciate clearly and slowly, so your audience can understand terms they may not recognize and still follow the gist of what you’re saying. If you’re reading Shakespeare in school, try sounding it out like this and see if that helps it make sense.