sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
Hi! If you're here for the public links and stories, happy browsing! I also added a music tag.

I love getting comments! Please no "shoulds" or "why don't you just".

Happy to give access to folks who can read and comment with kindness. Let me know if you're interested.

It's always access-change Amnesty Day around here. If you want to stop having access, I can take you back off, no questions asked. Likewise, I may change my reading/access list if I can't cope with something, with no implied judgments.

I wrote some books about healing from trauma!

Wellspring of Compassion: Self-Care for Sensitive People Healing from Trauma
Welcome to support and comfort whether you are new to healing or an old hand, whether the trauma is long past or ongoing.

Presence After Trauma: Reconcile with Your Self and the World
This book is a non-judgmental companion for your healing process after the initial crisis is over.

Embodying Hope: Living in Difficult Times with a Difficult Past
We embody hope when we keep moving forward, one stubborn step after another, and when we take shelter for protection and rest.


How to make a post sticky, for future reference, and anyone else who's wondering.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
Kaval Park, a full-length documentary about Alexander Eppler, an extraordinary American musician who specialized in Balkan instruments, including the shepherd's flute known as a kaval. He lived in Seattle, and the documentary includes other Balkan dancers and instrumentalists from the community there, as well as interviews with Bulgarians who knew him. I don't often watch movies, and this was fascinating. He went to Bulgaria by himself when he was 14 years old to learn naval, while it was still a closed communist country!

Queer Dating Apps: Beware Who You Trust With Your Intimate Data by Em, staff writer for Privacy Guides. A thorough analysis, with the depressing conclusion that none of the dating apps are trustworthy with your private data, and suggestions for how to protect yourself if you use them anyway.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
When I was 21 years old, my parents came out to visit me in California. My father is an audiophile, and he went with me to buy my very own stereo system with separate receiver, double tape deck, CD player, a stereo cabinet to put all that in, and speakers to hear it all. I had a big tape collection back then, mostly copied from his folk music records. The speakers are Advent Prodigy Towers, approximately a foot square and 28" high, with pecan wood on top and black grilles on the front.

I got rid of the tapes in this move back to California since I never listened to them anymore, but the same stereo system, cabinet, and speakers came back with me. I did replace the CD player about 10 years in, because apparently they changed the CD encoding over time and it stopped working.

My favorite thing to do with the stereo system since 2008 is to run my computer audio through it and play mp3s for folk dancing. I love the feel of the music through big speakers, and the audio quality is way better than the smaller portable speakers that big dance groups used.

A few years ago I realized the music was getting fuzzy. I took the front grille off, and the foam around the woofers was completely perished. I carefully unhooked them, put them in my bike trailer, and took them to a small audio store where a crusty older guy took them in and promised to repair them. A week or two later I biked back, picked them up, hauled them home, and reassembled the speakers. They sounded great! (Apparently this was in 2014.)

After the move back to California, the audio started dropping out unpredictably from one of the speakers when I was dancing. I tried swapping out the cable from the computer to the receiver, and swapping the speaker cables. Finally it got bad enough that I decided after 30+ years it was time to replace the speakers.

I did some online research and picked out some speakers that I wanted to check out at Best Buy. (I wonder if that's where I bought my system in the first place!) Then I started thinking about having new electronics off-gassing in my living room, and how I would get rid of the old speakers. I took off the grilles and unscrewed the woofers to take a look at them. The foam still looks good. I disconnected the clip that held in the woofer on the one that's been dropping out, and reconnected it.

I put it all back together and the audio hasn't dropped out since. Maybe the clip got jarred during the move? It didn't look wrong, but at least it's behaving better now. Which is good, because the one local audio repair place I found didn't return my message, and the new speakers I was interested in don't look nearly as nice as the old ones. The thought of new & improved electronics is exciting, but I love how my speakers sound and I'm glad they're not dead yet.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything by Effie Seiberg. A fun riff on superheroes that takes a serious look at the frustrations of ableism.

Monster by Naomi Kritzer. Darker than what Naomi Kritzer usually writes and what I recommend, but very well done. Nerdy friendship gone wrong.

Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer. A more hopeful look (than what is really happening) at what AI could do for us.

All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt by Marissa Lingen, [personal profile] mrissa. The frustrations of overly pushy salespeople at industry conventions, in SPAAAAACE. Also, author spotlight.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
I've been reading my own book Embodying Hope as preparation for trying to get it out in the world again. Turns out there's a lot of good stuff in there. And a few things I might want to change. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to make a revised edition. Small, manageable steps!

Find Calm: Practice Rest and Regulation talks about low tone dorsal vagal rest, which is a fancy way of saying a very old nervous system response that's similar to freeze, but which happens when we feel relationally safe enough to completely let down our guard. It's the response that leads a child to melt into the arms of a trusted adult.

I've been thinking about that in relation to the bodywork series I just finished. I felt safe enough with the practitioner to continue going, but not emotionally safe enough to fully let down my guard. I would get sleepy during the sessions, but I don't know if that was this rest and relaxation response, or just dissociation. It's hard to know when to push through something uncomfortable to get the benefit from it, and when to quit because it's not a good enough fit.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
One of the women in the Balkan community choir signed up to sing at the local farmer's market, and invited people to show up. Totally casual and disorganized, but it turned out well. About eight of us showed up (I was busy singing and didn't count, and people left and arrived at different times.) Everyone proposed songs at the same time and we all paged through our music. I had just alphabetized mine in its folder, but it still takes time to find things, and of course now I have to alphabetize it all over again.

We did manage to choose songs, and I awkwardly blew into my pitch pipe for starting notes, and we didn't even discuss who was singing which part, and we sounded pretty good. It was so casual that I wasn't even nervous about performing. It felt more like a private singing gathering that some people happened to hear.

It was a cool foggy day, so the market was uncrowded, and several small children watched us with pleased attention. Adults applauded, and even left money in the hat one of us put out.

Then there was an argument about what to do with $32.70 from the hat, and we ended up donating it to a homeless services center nearby, since there's an encampment right by the market. I bought my veggies and fruit for the week, and then sat with a few folks as they ate lunch and chatted.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
Sinking Feelings by Rebecca Boyle on Last Word On Nothing.
I am not saying we should not struggle at all. We want to fight to survive, and it’s hard to turn off that instinct. I am saying we should think about other ways to struggle, which might be counterintuitive but more effective. Getting safe might look a little different than we expect. The bog will not stop trying to destroy us, so we have to be creative. We have to be lithe and loose, quick-footed, maybe a little sneaky, maybe hew a bit closer to the darkness than we’re used to. There are ways out of every quagmire.


Via [personal profile] redbird, obituaries and articles about her mother, may her memory be a blessing. Eve Kugler BEM from Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and How Eve Kugler Changed the World by Karen Pollock, and Shattered Crystals by Eve Kugler about her experiences as a child survivor of the Holocaust.

The Best Part of Researching Trans History Is When I’m Wrong by Milo Todd.
In The Lilac People, my debut novel about trans people in Weimar Berlin and Nazi Germany, I have a side character so small, they’re downright tertiary. Dora Richter has no speaking role, nor does she have any impact on the plot. And yet she’s included because she’s important, and she was real.
[...]
But perhaps most importantly, we now know that such stories sometimes come with a happy ending. The reality is there. All we have to do is look.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
clean it like you mean it by [archiveofourown.org profile] WynterSky. "When Gotham's crooks have to scrub down their lairs, who do they call? Jason Todd, Gotham's first and only underworld crime scene cleaning specialist. He's spent his life dodging the Bat, but after a chance encounter he saves Robin's life.

Tim Drake finds himself drawn to the conflicted rogue, and soon Jason becomes Robin's street informant. But they can only stay on opposite sides of the law for so long before something breaks."

This novel-length story is more violent than most things I read or rec, but at the same time it is steeped in kindness. The characters have traumas that affect them, but don't stop them, and some traumas are satisfyingly resolved. The writing is layered like a work of art, and rewards rereading with gradual reveals of information.

I know of Batman and Robin's existence, but don't know canon beyond that. I bet there are even more layers of meaning if you do know canon.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
Two games I've been spending time on lately, both via [personal profile] umadoshi.

368 Chickens, group sets of three chickens by placing pairs of them, oddly forbids you from playing further once you win. I won in 20 attempts on the computer, with an unknown number of attempts on my phone too.

ExponenTile, described as "2048 meets match-3". Current high score 24, 408, highest tile so far 1024, and I'm kind of hoping I'll let that rest now.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
For Strong Women by Marge Piercy via [personal profile] musesfool. Posting it because it made me cry when it started talking about love, it rang so true for me. I had read it before, but I don't remember it landing the way it did today.

A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing "Boris Godunov."
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.
A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why aren't you dead?
A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.
A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
Balkan Folk Music Archive. Heather Meeker scanned in a huge archive of Balkan folk sheet music and made it available on this website.

Open Digital Archive, collections of memory items preserved by Armenian families all around the world, as well as concise microhistories of these families. Includes a video, Legends of Armenian kef Music, a history of Armenian American music by Ara Dinkjian. I've been looking for an Armenian recording I remember that included the melody from the beginning of Bach's Musette, with men singing "Ha, hey hey hey" on the fourth measure, and someone pointed me to this site. So far no luck finding it.

The Sound of Greek by Angelos Kanlis. Extremely geeky technical breakdown of Greek phonology.

Learn the Georgian alphabet by Apprenti Polyglotte, a friendly, hands-on series of pages to help learn the Georgian alphabet.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
In Praise of “Normal” Engineers: A software engineer argues against the myth of the “10x engineer” by Charity Majors.
The best engineering orgs are not the ones with the smartest, most experienced people in the world. They’re the ones where normal software engineers can consistently make progress, deliver value to users, and move the business forward.


Old CSS, new CSS by eevee a.k.a. evelyn woods. "I’m here to tell all of you to get off my lawn. Here’s a history of CSS and web design, as I remember it."

every core unix command I use and mega terminal cheat sheet by Julia Evans @bork@jvns.ca

20 years of Git. Still weird, still wonderful. by Scott Chacon.

Normalization of deviance by Dan Luu.
Have you ever mentioned something that seems totally normal to you only to be greeted by surprise? Happens to me all the time when I describe something everyone at work thinks is normal. For some reason, my conversation partner's face morphs from pleasant smile to rictus of horror. Here are a few representative examples.

There's the company that is perhaps the nicest place I've ever worked, combining the best parts of Valve and Netflix. The people are amazing and you're given near total freedom to do whatever you want. But as a side effect of the culture, they lose perhaps half of new hires in the first year, some voluntarily and some involuntarily. Totally normal, right? Here are a few more anecdotes that were considered totally normal by people in places I've worked. And often not just normal, but laudable.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
[personal profile] asakiyume kindly sent me her story "The Bee Wife," and I loved it. The characters and relationships and details of their world feel solid and present, and it feels good to spend time with them. The story is about grief, and love, and the unintended consequences of trying to protect people from grief. The ending touches on maintaining relationships in community even after terrible wrongdoing.

I'm curious about this community and the magic of the bees, and would love to read more about them someday.

Ordering links, excerpt, and beautiful cover art.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
I didn’t mean to become a counsellor by Sonny Hallett, via [personal profile] andrewducker. "I was asked to talk about barriers I encountered training as an autistic counsellor, though I also speak more broadly about the experiences of trainees of other minority groups, and what this means for counselling more generally."

How the sports bra continues to revolutionize sports and women’s rights: ‘No sports bra, no sport’ by Megan Feringa, via [personal profile] musesfool.

The Animals That Exist Between Life and Death by Phil Jaekl.
“These little animals, which had appeared to be completely dried and lifeless, were restored to motion upon the addition of water, as if they had never suffered any harm,” van Leeuwenhoek wrote. Microbiologists would later find that some species of rotifers are able to reanimate after up to nine years of desiccation.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
Joe Wos: I was wrong. He wrote a very negative editorial on bike infrastructure in Pittsburgh, and then learned the error of his ways.

Satya Rhodes-Conway: "now is the time to come together" by Meghan Parsche. "Madison's second female mayor made history in 2019 as Wisconsin's first out lesbian mayor." via [personal profile] jesse_the_k.

A Lawyer’s Crusade Against “Copaganda” by Aaron Gell. "How police and the media manufacture surges in crime."

The Authoritarian Regime Survival Guide by Martin Mycielski, published in social media in January 2017 in a series of improvised, spontaneous tweets, which reached 3 million views within one month. Their common element was their trademark signature, “- With love, your Eastern European friends”, and the accompanying hashtag #LearnFromEurope.

I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped by Jasmine Mooney. "I was stuck in a freezing cell without explanation despite eventually having lawyers and media attention. Yet, compared with others, I was lucky."
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
Crisis Planning: The Hit-By-A-Bus Plan by [personal profile] lb_lee.
The hit-by-a-bus plan is for when you are suddenly unable to perform your usual duties or communicate the need to get them done to others—such as when you are suddenly committed to a mental hospital, kidnapped, or hit by a bus and put in a coma. The plan is especially for people without spouse or families. Getting hit by a bus may be unavoidable, but less so is getting fired (or a pet dying) because you aren’t there and nobody knows what happened or what to do. It has two components: prep work for yourself (for psychological crisis), and stuff for helpers to do on your behalf afterward (general purpose).


This is a great post. I find it overwhelming to try to set all of this up at once. I might take small steps, like giving my immediate neighbors an emergency contact's phone number.

For those of us who have pets, having a pet sitter who already knows the situation and can get in if needed is useful in an unexpected absence.

Declaration of Interdependence by [tumblr.com profile] queerspacepunk (aka [archiveofourown.org profile] emmett) via [personal profile] jesse_the_k. I love this vision of easy interconnectedness, although a followup post brings up the need for clear communication and respect for boundaries as well.

I recently went through, "Where the heck is my neighbor and how do I make sure his cat gets fed." (All ended well, thank goodness.) While it might feel vulnerable to share information and ask for help, it's a kindness rather than an imposition to the surrounding community in case of unexpected emergencies.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea by Naomi Kritzer. A satisfying story about a geeky family staying in a tiny town on the Massachusetts coast. Sometimes things turn out okay in the end, although it can take a long, difficult time to get there.

We Begin Where Infinity Ends by Somto Thezue. Three scientifically inclined teens, their friendship, and their tinkering to save the fireflies.

Both of these stories are also about love and belonging.

Sick day

Apr. 10th, 2025 07:59 pm
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
I worked Monday-Wednesday of this week while sick, partly because I was already planning to be out today and tomorrow, and partly, I realized, I'm used to working through migraines and menstrual cramps (well, not anymore), so why would some head congestion and coughing stop me.

So today turned into a sick day instead of a vacation day, because I'm still sick, darn it! Possibly getting incrementally better, but still waking up at night coughing and with my nose running.

I called in the morning and got a same-day visit at the doctor, because I wanted to be tested for RSV and Covid and flu. You can't just go to the lab, you have to use a doctor's time first, and I waited an hour to see the doctor because she was running late. She was great once she got there. She did say it's probably some other virus, and she's seeing it last 2-3 weeks (augh!). At least it changes one week of illness from impossibly slow, what the hell is wrong with me, to oh, my immune system is winning as fast as it can.

And she said now that I've seen her, if I start seeing signs of a secondary bacterial infection (colorful mucus), I can send a note and she can prescribe antibiotics without another appointment. So that's good.

The other thing I did with my sick day is call Mitsubishi about my heat pump not holding temperature. Thermostats have one job! )
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
This PSA brought to you by the friend I met with outdoors, so no masks, who breathed in my face and then said he's recovering from a cold. "I'm feeling better, so I'm not infectious anymore." His voice was still raspy and it was clear his head was still full of gunk. I had a stuffed head and occasional sneezing for a week. Fortunately a week when I didn't have many in-person plans.

And also by the friend who said she had a mild sore throat a couple days before I was seeing her. When I checked in, she said she was feeling fine and a mask wasn't necessary. I had my doubts, but went along with the social pressure. Now I have a scratchy throat and raspy voice, and she has developed laryngitis. Welp. I did have a lot of in-person plans this week, but I guess I'll be canceling them.

I haven't tested positive for Covid in all this, so maybe they're "just" colds. But I still don't feel well, and they disrupt my life, since I don't want to keep passing the germs along.

I sympathize - before the start of the pandemic, my mantra used to be "I'm not sick! I'm not sick! I'm getting better! I'm getting better!" I know it's hard to communicate about illness and just stay home, but please, just stay home until you're really symptom-free, not just starting to feel better.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
I got on See Click Fix to report the terrible potholes on my nearest bike route, and it linked me to Oakland's 5 year paving plan starting in 2022. The fiscal year starts July 1, so they started paving the 2025 streets last year, which include a lot of the bike routes I use. Looks like my nearby bike route is due to be paved this summer, yay, but I wish they would patch the potholes before then anyway. Someone outlined them in paint a couple of times, starting at least a year ago, and they've patched further up, and on surrounding streets, but the segment near me hasn't gotten any repairs.

The future happens in Oakland first. That’s a cautionary tale for global cities by Lois Beckett, March 22, 2025.
Oakland, California, is often treated as a city on the margins, best known for its struggles with poverty and gun violence, as well as for its history of radical Black activism. But a new book, The Pacific Circuit, argues that Oakland should be viewed as one of the centers of global change in the past century, serving both as a key node in the new global economy built around trans-Pacific trade, and as one of the “sacrifice zones” this economy requires.

Far from being an outlier, US journalist Alexis Madrigal argues, Oakland is in fact an early adopter of the technological and economic changes now tearing through cities across the US, and around the world. Oakland has long been the canary in Silicon Valley’s coalmine of disruption, the book suggests. But its residents don’t suffer passively: they organize and learn how to fight back.


Civil rights lawyers on justia.com in Oakland and surrounding areas. You can search for your region in the search bar at the top right of the page.
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
via [personal profile] musesfool
I love the mix of metaphorical and actual things to lose, jumping across stanzas.

To Pray To The Goddess Of Lost Things
by Barbara Jane Reyes

Help me to find my innocence. I may have dropped it
On the bus last week, when I also lost my cellphone,

And a notebook full of poems. I keep dropping things.
I forget where I've left things. People keep taking my shit

Without asking. Maybe I've forgotten what I've lent out.
I can't hold it together. I'm trying. I'm trying, so help me

To find my pride. Some punk ass bitch stole it from me,
I'm sure, when I was at the mall. I just turned around

For a second. I was looking for my mother. I was
Updating my Facebook. I was blindsided by something

That must have been important, I was shoulder bumped
By strangers, I was robbed. I searched all my pockets,

My skinny jeans in piles of laundry, my shopping bags,
My crumpled receipts, and it just wasn't anywhere.

Where is my dignity, where is my credit card, where are
My self-esteem, my perfect size-two body, my medication,

Where did I leave those? Where is my lipstick, my car keys,
Where is my one true love, my very own happily ever after.

Where is my voice. Every time I speak, some man, any man
Always interrupts, and every time I speak louder, he shouts.

He claims he knows far better than I, what I need, what's good
For me. Where is my fire to burn the filth from his tongue.

He wants me to fit in his pants pocket. Where are my knives.
Where is my backbone. Where is my wishbone. Help me

Find my voice, because some white woman keeps yapping
At me, as if I should drop everything. As if I must listen.

She says she speaks on my behalf. Do not believe her.
She says she's my friend and my sister. She's a dirty liar.

Where are my manners? I seem to have lost those too.
My mother taught me to say please. Please help me find her.

Where is my compass; this GPS keeps leading me away
From all that is clear and cool. Help me to locate my center.

Where are my manners? My mother taught me also,
To remember to breathe. And always, always give thanks.
Page generated Jul. 5th, 2025 01:53 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios