Sally's Journal

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

Can people with vastly different cultural backgrounds live together peacefully? How?

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THE RISE OF EMOTIONAL SURVEILLANCE

Companies are monitoring workers not just for productivity but for agreeability.

The bad news is that software now purports to glean insights into the depths and vagaries of human emotion using AI, and it is coming to watch you. If it isn’t already: Morphcast, for example, has licensed its technology to a mental-health app, a program that monitors schoolchildren’s attention, and McDonald’s, which launched a promotional campaign in Portugal that scanned app users’ faces and offered them personalized coupons based on their (supposed) mood. It is one of many, many such companies doing similar work—the industry term is emotion AI or sometimes affective computing.


Back in 1984, the roleplaying came Paranoia came out. The primary antagonist was The Computer. It was always spying on people, and if they didn't look happy enough, The Computer became suspicious and sent Troubleshooters (the player characters) after them. Or each other. "Your job as a Troubleshooter is to hunt down mutants and members of secret societies. You are a mutant. You are also a member of a secret society. Won't this be fun?" It was amusing at the time, but it's far too much like modern life to be fun anymore. :( That memory of people faking happiness to minimize the risk of further abuse in a dystopia stuck with me. And now here we are.

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This poem came out of the February 2026 crowdfunding Creative Jam. It was inspired by a prompt from curiosity. It also fills the "Nonsexual Touch" square in my 2-1-26 card for the Valentines Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred. This poem belong to the college arc of the Shiv thread in the Polychrome Heroics series.


Warning: This poem deals with a minor fall from a tree, superpower overstrain, and worried friends. If these are touchy topics for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.

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The sun came out just in time to set and I caught a handful of pictures in its gold flare of light, mostly lilacs and shadows.

( Dyna oedd yr awel, hwn yw y corwynt. )

I baked cornbread tonight with dinner, which I may not have done for a year. I had wanted some for weeks. Any time things could get easier, just for the hell of it.

Anyways, I'm having a splendid day!

I managed to get through work mostly well, and then it was off to Science Park to meet up with Alexander and drag them around to the blood donation center at MGH. I enjoy having friends who are similar enough brained to me to totally get me saying "yeah, there's definitely a more efficient path to the blood donation center, but we are going to go the very long way around because that's the way I _know_".

I'm always happy to drag more new people to give BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD. They went through the system much faster than I did, which is unsurprising --I basically always get to have bonus conversation with the investigative nurses who are Very Concerned that I checked the "heart problems" box. I've gotten pretty fucking irreverent about the whole thing, but I think mostly in a charming way. "Oh, you have to get down the binder! Yes, I believe it says patent ductus arteriosis is like the only heart thing that *doesn't* make one ineligible". It's amazing they don't kick me out for being insufferable, but it turns out they do really want my blood.

Anyways, we gave blood mostly asynchronously, but they very kindly hung around and waited until I had eaten enough snax for us to go home and Hang Out. Playing "I dunno, what do YOU want to do?" resulted in rifling through my stack of DVDs and then an extremely excitable moment of OH, how do you feel about horror movies? What about musicals? What about Christmas movies?

It's been a goodly chunk of time since I've watched Anna and the Apocalypse, is what I'm saying, and I'm pleased to have managed to do so with someone who could enjoy it in all its ridiculous genre-defying glory.

The rest of my weekend also seems like it is going to go Very Well. Tomorrow I am going to the MFA with my friend Apollo. I was sad because my dance-brother emailed to be all "I'm hosting a board game day very close to your house" with a start time pretty much exactly when Apollo and I are supposed to get to the museum. When I expressed the sad at Stephen, he pointed out that board games are gonna keep going until like one AM, so yeah, I will be going directly from one to the other.

And then Sunday you would expect me to try and get some grading done, and I probably will try? But there's secret English Dance calling practice in the morning (er, not practice for me, although I am reminded of the secret plan I was joking about in which I learn how to call other things so they invite me back to call ESCape sooner) and BIDA in the evening. Hm. HM.

The grades are due on Monday, and unfortunately this is not the end of the year, just last progress reports, so I do need to catch up and I also won't get an amnesty after. Ah well.

I hope your life is treating you kindly.

~Sor
MOOP!

Going on week two of random mid-sleep wakeups wherein I am convinced I have badly overslept and missed my entire shift.

What even is causing this? (Don't say stress, I'm sure it's stress! But what is causing the stress!? Is it lack of sleep? Because the lack of sleep sure ain't helping, gotta say.)

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This is genuinely a little detail.
Context: Character is stranded outside her home base and uses a walkie talkie to make contact and ask for pickup.

How do you describe actually engaging the walkie talkie? "clicked the button" is way lame. "Key" seems to specifically describe hitting the button but not talking, to "send" static (I think?), like to silently say "I'm here". (this could be massively wrong and just the misguided interpretation of the one website where I saw it described that way.)

I feel like there must be an appropriate word/phrase, but I struck out trying to find it myself. Someone elsewhere suggested checking HAM radio sites - I'm about to do that, but thought I'd throw this in here and see if I got the usual super-helpful feedback.

SOULMATE, YOKEMATE, HOUSEMATE, HELPMATE

In OED2, soul-mate was listed under soul, n., along with other compounds, such as soul carrier, -curer, -thief, and -twister. The new OED3 Online gives it its own headword, soulmate, n. and updates the Coleridge quotation to what you see above (whereas OED2 had the slightly different “You must have a Soulmate as well as a House or Yoke-mate.”).

Coleridge’s neology is pretty good, but the analogy is a bit fuzzy. A house mate shares your house; And two things that are yoked are indeed paired – a yokemate is just the other term in a pairing, even if the idea of the yoke also carries a connotation of a shared burden
[---8<---]
Helpmate appears about fifty years later, perhaps as a reanalysis of helpmeet, OED2 saying that applies “chiefly to a wife or husband”,


A relationship can be built on many things, so think about what you want. Someone who touches your spirit? Someone to share the burdens of life, thereby making it easier overall? Someone to live with? Someone to help you do things? If it's just based on romance or sex, it's less likely to have the staying power of a relationship built on common life goals.

My oven stopped doing the thing that I consider to be a fundamental element of its function, i.e., getting hotter than the surrounding room. I called an appliance repair company my neighbor said she'd used; the tech replaced the electric ignition and I gave him a check for $250 and he went away, but my oven is still not getting hot. I have called them again and would very much like them to solve this issue so I can bake, and I really hope I don't have to buy a new stove. (Not least because there are not a lot of stoves that are 20 inches wide.)

So I took myself out for a burger and mocktail at the new restaurant down the street and read the first 80 pages of Radiant Star, the new Ann Leckie, and well, I'm still upset about the oven but this might as well happen.

Points Donation Challenge Wrap-Up by yourlibrarian 

In the end we had 16 donors and 20 giftees. Donors have been notified and will be making their point gifts directly to assigned giftees. If you offered to donate and have not received a direct message from me, please let me know.

Giftees should be seeing messages from Dreamwidth when the gifts go through. If you have not received anything by May 31, please let me know as something may have gone awry.

Once all gifts have been sent we will have added $402 to Dreamwidth's intake this year.

Extreme weather events, especially heatwaves, cause enormous harm to bird populations worldwide

Outdoor thermometers tell you the temperature. They don’t capture how the air actually feels – and on muggy summer days, the combination of heat and humidity is what pushes animals past their limits.

Birds face the same physics, but with far fewer escape routes. A new review from Sweden argues that the full picture of how heatwaves kill or weaken birds has been hiding in the humidity data all along.


While individuals cannot influence weather directly, we can do many things to protect birds from heat and drought.

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1. How often do you hear live music?

2. What was your favorite live musical performance ever?

3. Do you play an instrument, or sing?

4. Have you ever performed music onstage?

5. Who is your favorite musician?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

and why is this the first time I've seen this fanvid?

(It's short. Go watch it, you don't need to know literally anything.)

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Today is cloudy, breezy, and damp. It rained earlier, but I can't tell how much.

I fed the birds. I've seen several sparrows and house finches plus a mourning dove.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 5/15/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 5/15/26 -- I sowed The Sunflower Mini Meadow seeds from John Scheeper's Kitchen Garden Seeds along the west edge of the westmost north-south strips in the prairie garden. This is a big bag of annual and perennial sunflower seeds. Method: I dug a small hole with a trowel, dropped in a pinch of seeds, covered that up, then moved down a foot and repeated the process. This should have a better success rate than broadcast sowing like usual, because doing that with sunflower seeds means that most or all would get eaten. At least it's easier to dig with the soil moistened by rain.

EDIT 5/15/26 -- I sowed the east edge of the westmost strip with the same sunflower mix. This time I remembered to take my seed-sowing trowel with its long thin blade. Method: I poked a hole with the tip, stuck the trowel in the hole, and dropped a pinch of seeds to slide down the blade into the hole. Then I covered the hole. It's more accurate with a little less bending down. This trowel is no good for prying and needs softer soil because it's so thin, but in this context it's very helpful.

EDIT 5/15/26 -- I sowed 'Evening Sun' sunflowers from Buffalo Seed Co. along the west edge of the middle north-south strip. That used the whole packet; it wasn't very big. These should be large mahogany to burgundy sunflowers.

EDIT 5/15/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 5/15/26 -- I sowed The Sunflower Mini Meadow seeds from John Scheeper's Kitchen Garden Seeds along the east edge of the middle north-south strip.

EDIT 5/15/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 5/15/26 -- I sowed sunflower seeds gathered 9-23-25 from last year's sunflowers in the north notch of the prairie garden.

EDIT 5/15/26 -- I sowed sunflower seeds gathered 10-8-25 from last year's sunflowers along the north edge of the east-west strip.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

Thanks to all the donors and giftees for stepping forward to take part in the Points Gifts challenge.

In the end we had 16 donors and 20 giftees. Donors have been notified and will be making their point gifts directly to assigned giftees. If you offered to donate and have not received a direct message from me, please let me know.

Giftees should be seeing messages from Dreamwidth when the gifts go through. If you have not received anything by May 31, please let me know as something may have gone awry.

Once all gifts have been sent we will have added $402 to Dreamwidth's intake this year \o/

I'm not feeling great today; I didn't sleep very well last night - I was restless and wakeful - and my cold seems to have freshened up, and I've also got a headache. Hopefully this will be the worst day and I'll be on the mend from now on. Just as well the dentist appointment isn't for another few days.

I managed to get the signed dental records release form scanned and emailed back to my old dentist, and this morning they emailed me to say they have already sent my records to the new dentist. So now everything is set up and all I have to do is go to the appointment.

In spite of not feeling 100% this morning I managed to go for a 5 km/3 mile walk after breakfast. I was hoping for a good dose of sunshine, but it was partly cloudy most of the time I was out. I'm highly motivated to get the kms in these days because I'm really close to finishing my virtual run/walk around the US - only 122 km/76 miles to go. After 17, 048 km, it feels unreal that the end is so close. (I started this virtual journey on 9th December 2016 so it's an ingrained part of my life now.)

Flisters, we have had results at last! The Great Cat Hunt has been on since Easter, but it's really hard to find a suitable indoor cat when all the shelters insist on the cats should have outdoors access. Because of living on a road with a good deal of traffic, that's just not something we dare offer them. (I mean, it seems to be going okay for the neighbours' cat who come into our garden a lot, but I really don't have that sort of bravery) And on top of that, there's the added difficulty of finding one that can be put together with an older cat and preferably not look like the older cat OR the cat that came before it. It has not been easy!

HOWEVER! Yesterday the God of Cats finally smiled down on us, and we drove nearly two hours each way, coincidentally to the same shelter that Holly came from. (And you know what, now that I think of it, I'm not entirely certain, Holly did not actually live in that very same cage...)

So here's Daisy! She's 27 weeks old and seems to be settling in. She has not yet met Holly (who is protesting wildly against the closed door), but she is interested in her surroundings and has had a good long nap on Husband's lap today. If she continues to settle in well, we will probably try to let them meet briefly on Sunday and see how that goes. Tonight, they will swap ends of the house, so Holly can get a good sniff at Daisy's smell and Daisy can explore the rest of the house before meeting Holly.

Posted by Zach Weinersmith

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Unrelated, on a bluesky thread we discovered that there are many philosophers whose names rhyme with Bagel, but other Jewish breads are not so favored.

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