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Today is my birthday.

This is a prank-free zone if the rest of the internet is annoying you today. Enjoy!

APRIL 2026 BOOK: A MAGIC STEEPED IN POISON on bookclub_dw

Hello! After a close fought battle, the winner for April is: A Magic Steeped In Poison by Judy I. Lin.

When the County Asks the City to Take Over a Road

Every road transfer is a promise to pay for it later.

Pavement eventually fails. Stormwater systems need maintenance. Signals and lighting must be replaced. Sidewalks crack. Trees require care.

These costs rarely arrive all at once. They accumulate gradually over decades. But once a city accepts ownership of a street, those obligations become permanent.


Since most cities are already broke, an essential first step is to stop taking on more debt and obligations. Every proposal to add more should be challenged by asking how they will pay for it, and pointing out all the other deferred maintenance.

I got to talking with someone about strategies for eating while depressed. Most food advice is aimed at losing weight, not at making sure you consume enough fuel to stay alive and somewhat healthy when the thought of shopping or cooking or even eating is exhausting. So here are some ideas and resources...

( Read more... )

Watch for the upcoming event Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, running April 25-May 15. Folks post content only visible on Dreamwidth, and there are usually memes and other activities too. Mark your calendars!

This year I'm planning to focus on reading books to become an expert.

Supreme Court rules against Colorado's conversion therapy ban on First Amendment grounds

"Colorado's law addressing conversion therapy does not just ban physical interventions. In cases like this, it censors speech based on viewpoint," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority. "Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same. But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country."


Here's the thing about politics: every weapon in your hand is also a weapon in your enemy's hand.

We should immediately use this to attack every gag rule against talking about homosexuality and where to get a safe abortion and every other things the despots want to muzzle, on the grounds of free speech. All of them at once, forcing the despots to play whack-a-mole while contradicting what they just argued above. Then keep all the things they say, and match them up, showing how it's not about free speech but that they will say anything to get what they want. Shine a light on it. Cockroaches hate light.

This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, April 7, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "I am SO done with this!" I'll be soliciting ideas for  activists, rebels, Women Who Run with the Saberteeth, explorers, traitors, exes, people who escape domestic violence, refugees, runaway youth, escaped slaves or other captives, housemates, siblings, parents, teachers, clergy, leaders, superheroes, supervillains, teammates, alien or fantasy species, failure analysts, ethicists, stray or feral animals, other people who get into untenable situations, protesting, planning, throwing in the towel, escaping, running like someone left the gate open, adventuring, hitchhiking, quitting school, divorcing, disowning, betraying, teaching, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, bartering, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, expecting the unexpected, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, trails, sailing ships, campervans or RVs, distant lands, the forest primeval, prehistory, liminal zones, schools, homeless shelters, hotels, churches, sharehouses, campfires, laboratories, supervillain lairs, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, stores, farmer's markets, starships, alien planets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other places where the intolerable happens, unhappy relationships, protest rallies, slavery or captivity, locks or chains, travel mishaps, sudden surprises, the buck stops here, trial and error, weird food, secret ingredients, supplements that turn out to be metagenic, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, Get a Life Program, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

An Army of One is developing its own neurovariant culture after rebelling against the Galactic Arms.

The Bear Tunnels introduces modern principles to people in the past.

A Conflagration of Dragons has the Six Races (plus the dragons) who all have different cultures and climates.  This often poses challenges for the refugees.

Coracle Shores is about leaving a distressed world for somewhere better.

The Daughters of the Apocalypse has people trying to find enough resources to survive, when former cities are unsafe.

The Moon Door explores a women's chronic pain group and lycanthropy.

Not Quite Kansas deals with demons and angels, also characters dumped out of their original worlds.

The Ocracies has a wide variety of countries crammed together, each with a totally different government.  Sometimes people leave their homeland to find something they like better.

One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis follows Shaeth as he works on becoming the God of Drunks after quitting as the God of Evili.

Path of the Paladins includes a few characters who have walked away from unbearable situations, like Johan.

Peculiar Obligations combines Quakers and pirates, the latter of whom are well versed in weighing anchor.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society.  The supervillains are the most likely to cut and run from a bad situation.

Schrodinger's Heroes has a lot of situations that people want to get away from including Chris avoiding some of his relatives, Morgan moving to a new dimension, and dimensions that just suck for everyone.

The Wandering is a series about fantasy time travel where people loop back within their own lifespan.

Or you can ask for something new.

Linkbacks reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week. (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts. I am now.) Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )