Bienvenidxs a Latam!
Mar. 21st, 2026 09:23 pmEveryone's welcome, no matter where you're posting from! And you can also post in your language (official languages of the community are Spanish, Portuguese and English!)
Come make friends! We have a friending meme going on right now :)
Interesting Links for 20-03-2026
Mar. 20th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. Earth's first mass extinction may have been far worse than believed
- (tags:extinction prehistory paleontology )
- 2. People using AI to give law advice finally reaches Scotland.
- (tags:ai law scotland )
- 3. Denmark was preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland in January, with military support from France, Germany, and Nordic nations.
- (tags:war usa norway germany france denmark )
- 4. This perfectly encapsulates why I won't surf the web without an ad-blocker
- (tags:advertising web newspapers )
- 5. How *did* a multi-storey car park get built in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle?
- (tags:edinburgh cars history )
- 6. Waymo self driving cars are 13x safer than humans
- (tags:safety automation driving cars )
- 7. Police Scotland announce they don't want trans people to report any crimes
- (tags:transgender LGBT bigotry OhForFucksSake Scotland )
- 8. The change that made lighthouses work much better - and why it drove the keepers mad. (Lots and lots of mercury)
- (tags:mercury light history safety ships )
- 9. Gen Z is broke, stressed and exhausted - but boomers won't accept it
- (tags:stress society doom )
Interesting Links for 19-03-2026
Mar. 19th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. Tech hobbyist makes shoulder-mounted guided missile prototype with $96 in parts and a 3D printer
- (tags:weaponry technology 3dprinting )
- 2. Kagi Translate's AI answers the question "What would horny Margaret Thatcher say?"
- (tags:language translation margaretthatcher wtf )
- 3. Ever wanted to be able to translate from English to LinkedIn? Now you can!
- (tags:language funny translation viaswampers )
- 4. Grok, explain Butlerian Jihad [ai]
- (tags:funny scifi )
- 5. Austin build new housing - rents came down
- (tags:economics housing usa )
Interesting Links for 18-03-2026
Mar. 18th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. Coming soon to Netflix... a movie that requires none of your attention!
- (tags:movies netflix attention video satire funny )
- 2. Everyone but Trump Understands What He's Done
- (tags:politics UK USA middle_east Ukraine Russia NATO )
- 3. Scotland's assisted dying bill rejected after emotional debate
- (tags:Scotland euthanasia )
- 4. More reports show that forcing people back to the office hurts productivity
- (tags:productivity office )
Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan community
Mar. 18th, 2026 11:32 amAnyone is free to join, even those who have never listened before! Although if that is you, I'd recommend checking out the project's Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and Youtube to get acquainted :D
Discussion on the community will include, but is not limited to, avourite songs/albums/album artwork, physical media, how you discovered the music, recommendations for similar music, etc.
The current rules are pretty standard: no harassment/discrimination against any other Dreamwidth users; no NSFW/explicit content unless it's directly connected to the community's theme; and please keep any posts/comments on topic as much as possible. Anything else can be decided on in the future.
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Withnail & I communities
Mar. 18th, 2026 09:35 amAlthough not entirely new (made in October 2025) both communities are unused as of yet, due to most of the fandom being on other platforms. Feel free to join whether you're a casual fan, or if it's your favourite film of all time, or if you're somewhere in between!
Interesting Links for 17-03-2026
Mar. 17th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. "Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don't rewrite an Iran missile story"
- (tags:iran israel journalism gambling ohforfuckssake )
- 2. Subnautica 2 Publisher Followed ChatGPT's Advice On How To Break The Law
- (tags:law ai games OhForFucksSake )
- 3. Nvidia's Next-Gen Photo-Realistic Lighting looks, frankly, amazing
- (tags:games lighting nvidia video )
- 4. Regression, Not Progress: A Response to World Athletics' Return to Sex Testing
- (tags:gender testing OhForFucksSake women LGBT transgender biology )
- 5. Have some simple but inspiring images about growth through making mistakes
- (tags:inspiration visualisation )
- 6. Almost 25 years ago, a war game exercise had an Iran-stand in use asymmetric warfare to obliterate a US military force. So they re-ran it to force a US victory.
- (tags:usa military ohforfuckssake iran games )
Grumpy about overly-simplistic polling
Mar. 17th, 2026 11:27 amI do wish that polls wouldn't ask if people thought that the PM was handling something "Well" or "Badly". Because two people answering "Badly" might mean completely different things by it.
Also, me saying "Immigration is important to me" means the opposite of what a Reform voter would mean by it.
This because of reporting of how many people think that Starmer is handling the Iran situation well or badly. When I can guarantee that some of the "badly" think we should be bombing Iran right now, and some think that we shouldn't be involved even slightly.
Interesting Links for 16-03-2026
Mar. 16th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. Royal Mail The Lord of the Rings Stamps
- (tags:lotr movies royalmail )
- 2. UK government to launch £1bn plan to tackle youth unemployment
- (tags:unemployment apprentices uk )
- 3. Excel incorrectly assumes that the year 1900 is a leap year (I've been using it for over 35 years and had no idea)
- (tags:excel date history computers )
- 4. Scientists create first-of-its-kind 'hexagonal diamond' harder than real thing
- (tags:diamonds materials )
What books did Terry Pratchett find inspirational?
Mar. 15th, 2026 06:54 pmI had the pleasure of Terry’s company on a week-long Writer’s Retreat twice, in 1990, as part of a company of eight interesting people in Diss, Suffolk.
Terry later came to my wedding and gave me a proof copy of ‘Lords and Ladies’ as a wedding gift! I had never read his books before I met him, so I began with ‘Wyrd Sisters’ - and have carried on reading them ever since.
When he learned I was meeting up with Terry again, my local Librarian shouted ‘Oook!’ and collected up every book by Terry which he had in the Library, and asked him to sign them. This amused Terry - and shocked other participants! "You shouldn't write in Library Books" etc...
Terry and I were both reading Henry Mayhew’s ‘London labour and the London poor’ at the time.
I asked Terry to make a list of other books which he found inspirational. Here they are:
- ‘The Evolution Man’ by Roy Lewis.
- ‘The Specialist’ by Charles Sale.
- ‘The Canterbury Tales’ by Chaucer.
- ‘Fairy Tales’ by Charles Perrault.
- Jacqueline Simpson’s folklore books.
- Everything by J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis.
- ‘The Wind From the Sun’ by Arthur C. Clarke.
- ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ by Stella Gibbons (my favourite book).
- ‘Mistress Masham’s Repose’ and the Arthurian Trilogy by T H White.
- I also add the new series of novels set in St Mary’s by Jodi Taylor, of whom I am a keen fan, and strongly recommend. Terry told Jodi how much he liked her writings. Start with ‘Just One Da*ned Thing After Another’ and carry on enjoying!
- Edit - I forgot 'The Moomins' series!
Life with two children: Gideon updates
Mar. 15th, 2026 08:50 am12:05
"I need a wee"
Took him to the toilet.
"Daddy, my tummy hurts"
Gave him some medicine
"Do you want to be in pyjamas or just straight back to bed?"
"Back to bed"
And then he closed his eyes.
12:20
Thundering footsteps "Daddy, I feel sick"
Told him to go to the toilet. Kept him company, got him a bucket.
He wasn't sick.
Persuaded him to take the bucket to bed.
Sat on the floor next to his bed until he closed his eyes.
12:35
More thundering steps
"Daddy, my arm and leg hurt"
By the time I'd found him medicine he was asleep again.
But woke up again and let me give him some Calpol.
03:30
"I'm hungry" (not surprising as he didn't eat yesterday)
We agreed on cream cheese crackers.
He ate ⅘ of the cracker and drank some juice and passed out again.
06:30
"I checked the light coming under the curtain and it's morning time"
I told him to go play games on the Switch downstairs.
Fifteen minutes later I could still hear him wandering about and I hadn't heard any game noises.
Went to check on him and he told him that he'd found various points around the house where the floor isn't flat.
Got him settled with the Switch, and then went back to bed and stared vacantly at my phone for an hour, before getting up to face the day.
galorechallenge | Round 14 is now open!
Mar. 14th, 2026 11:32 pmAlso once the round ends, we'll vote on our favorites by fandom & you can get a fancy award. Or if there is only 1 crossover for a particular fandom, it will move on to the next round.
While it is a multi-fandom challenge, and SO MANY fandoms are allowed, there are some restrictions, so check out the fandoms currently allowed.
Round 14 is open until June 30, 2026 @ 11:59 EST.
Rules & FAQ | Prompts | Submit New Prompts/Crossovers |
Performing some traffic maintenance today
Mar. 14th, 2026 01:04 pmHappy Saturday!
I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!
If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.
Photo cross-post
Mar. 14th, 2026 12:33 pm![]()
The first time Gideon fell asleep in front of the toilet we moved him
to a comfy chair. From where he woke up still feeling sick and Jane
found him lying on the floor with a bucket he'd found and relocated
him back to the toilet, where he then fell asleep again.
I missed all of this because I had passed out in bed feeling rubbish. I did wake up to various noises, but each time I did I tried to open my eyelids, failed, and fell back to sleep again. Thankfully Jane isn't feeling as bad as me, and Sophia was off having a play date at the other end of the street.
So far nobody has actually thrown up. Fingers crossed that continues.
Original
is here on Pixelfed.scot.
Interesting Links for 14-03-2026
Mar. 14th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. This 18-year-old Afghan girl had offers from York and Reading - thanks to Shabana Mahmood, she will now never escape the Taliban
- (tags:Afghanistan women UK migration asylum education OhForFucksSake )
- 2. AI toys for children misread emotions and respond inappropriately
- (tags:toys children ai )
- 3. PEGI to give 16 age rating to games with loot boxes (amongst several other changes)
- (tags:gambling children games )
- 4. Have two people being *ridiculously* good at a Dance Pad game
Streamed live at: https://www.twitch.tv/tomatoniumWorld 1st PG on Sarabande CoopP1: ElijahTSP2: Tomatonium
(tags:games dancing video viamybrothermike )- 5. New NHS England Review Excluded 97% Of All Trans Studies To Say Care Doesn't Work
- (tags:LGBT bigotry healthcare OhForFucksSake transgender )
- 6. Tracing the lobbying behind age verification laws
- (tags:age surveillance USA law politics )
Interesting Links for 13-03-2026
Mar. 13th, 2026 12:00 pm- 1. Landmark EU court ruling forces Member States to guarantee legal gender recognition for mobile citizens
- (tags:LGBT transgender Europe GoodNews )
- 2. U.S. Navy Turns Down Hormuz Escort Requests Because of High Risk
- (tags:usa iran war )
- 3. US- and Greek-owned tankers ablaze after Iran claims 'underwater drone' strike in Iraqi waters
- (tags:Iran drone war Greece USA Iraq shipping oil trade doom )
- 4. Lost Doctor Who and the Daleks episodes discovered in 'ramshackle' collection
- (tags:drwho history )
