kindkit | Network

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/abraham-lincoln-statue-louisville

Abraham Lincoln has several significant connections to Louisville, Kentucky, most notably an 1841 visit to the city where he stayed with his friend Joshua Speed at the Farmington plantation.

He also spent time reading law books at a downtown Louisville office and would later become deeply invested in keeping his home state in the Union during the Civil War. Today, you can see the Lincoln Memorial at Waterfront Park with a 12-foot statue by Ed Hamilton and bas reliefs depicting his life, and another Lincoln statue outside the Louisville Free Public Library.

The original bronze top hat was stolen from the statue in December 2023. The statue's sculptor had the hat recreated, and the new hat was reattached to the statue in June 2024. The original hat was never found and its fate remains a mystery.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/abraham-lincoln-statue-louisville

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wu-feng-temple

Wu Feng was a Han interpreter and mediator during the Qing Empire’s rule in Taiwan. At that time, Han settlers never fully controlled the island, and conflicts with Indigenous peoples were frequent. Interpreters—known as tongshi—were vital for trade and negotiation, and Wu Feng, based in today’s Chiayi area, was said to be respected by both sides.

After almost fifty years of service, Wu was murdered by Indigenous people, though the real cause remains unclear. Later, his story turned into legend—the Japanese colonizers recast him as a benevolent hero who sacrificed his life to civilize Indigenous peoples. The Wufeng Temple was established and glorified in this context.

After 1945, the KMT government continued to spread the legend. Generations of Taiwanese learned Wu’s story from textbooks as the kind Chinese man who brought light to the “uncivilized.” Inside the temple, a large plaque inscribed by Chiang Kai-shek reads “To Sacrifice Oneself for Justice,” along with paintings and materials dedicated to the deified Wu Feng.

Everything changed after Taiwan’s democratization in the late 1980s. With the rise of the Indigenous rights movement, Wu’s statues were torn down in nearby Chiayi City (though the namesake road remains). People began to recognize that the story was unfounded, and the temple slowly faded from public attention. Now it is a quiet, off-the-beaten-track site.

Though the sacrifice legend is now known to be unreal, the temple actually become a perfect place to think about history. Our memories are constantly constructed and deconstructed by multiple narratives—just like the many, many stone tablets you can find in the temple yard.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wu-feng-temple

redbird

I signed up for a 2026 Medicare Advantage (part C) plan today. I had it narrowed it down to two plans, and decided yesterday which one I like better. There are minor differences--in particular, the one I chose has a lower copay for physical therapy--but there don't seem to be significant differences. It also has a slightly better rating, according to the Medicare.gov site, by half a star, but that might not be significant (an average 3.7 rounds to 3.5, and 3.8 rounds to 4).

Now, it should just be a matter of telling various doctors and pharmacies that my insurance has changed as of Jan. 1st, and maybe dealing with a new mail-order pharmacy for the Kesimpta.

They gave me a confirmation number, and if I don't hear from the company in the next few days I will call. (Normal open enrollment ends Dec. 7, but I have a "special election period" that runs through February.)

Current Mood: accomplished

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/30/a-cat-of-absolute-dignity/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58414

It would be premature to say that Saja the kitten rules the roost around here, but it is true that he very quickly became extremely comfortable with his position in the house, flopping onto the floor wherever he feels like flopping and making routing around him everyone else’s problem. This lounging position very well exemplifies his attitude: Why not let it all hang out? If someone want to complain, that’s a them issue, isn’t it?

This does delight me; I like a kitten with attitude, and also I don’t mind launching him across the floorboard like a furry curling stone if he’s in my way. When I do, he usually looks up at me like, you win this round, human, and then tries eating my face at 3am. Again, I don’t hate this. A little feline attitude goes a long way with me.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/11/30/a-cat-of-absolute-dignity/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58414

kaffy_r

Help!

As probably most of you know, I normally enter a Holiday and Christmas card writing frenzy around this time of year. Last year I didn't, since the outcome of Nov. 5 depressed me so badly.

This year I decided to revive the tradition; I'm not going to let Cheetoh ruin another holiday season for me. And for the most part, writing and addressing cards has been as much fun as it always was.

Just one problem: my Gmail contacts list has turned wonky, and I've lost way too many of the addresses I've used to send y'all cards in the past.

So, in the spirit of beating whatever the hell group of gremlins invaded my contacts, and more importantly, in the spirit of sending cards to everyone to whom I've sent cards before, can I ask folks to give me their IRL addresses? If you're not comfortable with that, could you send me an email address to which I can send an e-holiday card?

If you're ok with that, just DM me. You will make this old blue-haired broad very happy.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: the living room
Current Music: RM "Seoul"

ysabetwordsmith

Signatures meant more in Mesopotamia than they do now − what cylinder seals say about ancient and modern life

In essence, a cylinder seal was a small sculpture that served a crucial utilitarian purpose: signing documents. It was generally made of a precious or semiprecious stone such as lapis lazuli, agate or chalcedony. Images and texts were engraved into the stone with a technique called intaglio. Notably, these engravings would need to be made in reverse of how the markings would look when it was used.

When rolled on a moist clay tablet, these engravings left low-relief markings, signifying that the object’s owner authorized the written document. In this respect, a cylinder seal’s impression is the ancestor of modern handwritten and digital signatures.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

greghousesgf

I've been watching some great stuff on TV lately, mostly comedies. I also had fun with my friend in Japantown yesterday and when I went out this morning to get a few groceries I found a 20 dollar bill!!

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Velvet Goldmine soundtrack

mekare

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

languagehat_feed

Posted by languagehat

https://languagehat.com/close-et-ha-door/

https://languagehat.com/?p=18775

Another interesting post by Anatoly Vorobey at Avva (again, I translate from his Russian); he shows a shop sign that says in Hebrew “Air conditioning / Please close the door” and says:

But the phrase ‘to close the door’ lacks the definite article ha and the direct object particle et: instead of “lisgor et hadelet,” it’s written “lisgor delet.” The effect is a bit comical, difficult to convey in Russian; it’s as if someone wrote, “We have air conditioning; please close a door somewhere.” Or if in English it was “Air conditioning inside, please close a door.” The sign was probably written by “Russians” [i.e., Russian immigrants to Israel].

This particle et is a strange thing; you can omit it (but leave the definite article) and then it looks sort of like high style: “na lisgor hadelet.” I searched the Hebrew Language Academy website and found an interesting note about it: it seems it’s not entirely clear why in Biblical Hebrew this particle is sometimes absent before an object with a definite article. And David Ben-Gurion, the founding father and first prime minister of modern Israel, couldn’t stand it, considered it harmful, and deliberately didn’t use it in writing.

But he failed to break the established et ha- tradition, and people generally continue to use et even more than in the past (for example, in phrases like “I have [something]”). And they usually ask visitors to close et ha-door. Not like in this sign.

I find that very intriguing, and I hope Hatters with more Hebrew than I will have things to say about it.

https://languagehat.com/close-et-ha-door/

https://languagehat.com/?p=18775

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy and cold. Yesterday it snowed copiously, which wiped out our plans for Small Business Saturday. :( It was pretty for a while though. Then it rained. Then it froze again. O_O Now the snow looks a week old and there is plate ice over the road and parts of the patio.

I fed the birds. I hung up a peanut suet cake. I've seen one female and three male cardinals plus a dark-eyed junco. :D This is the first I've seen of my little snowbirds this year; the juncos are cold-weather birds here and don't appear in summer.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 11/30/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 11/30/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

.

Current Mood: busy

pauraque

Last month I finally got off my ass and put up bird feeders in the yard. Moving is a process, okay?

small bird with a green back, gray wings and tail, yellow belly, white face, and black cap perches on a vertical tube feeder full of mixed seed and nuts

small bird with a green back, gray wings and tail, yellow belly, white face, and black cap perches on a vertical tube feeder full of mixed seed and nuts

Black-capped Chickadee. Despite being our most common backyard bird, they are kind of my favorite. (Don't tell the others.) I love the color palette of their plumage. They can't open seeds with their beaks, so they will often take one and fly away to bang it open on a tree branch. Sometimes they are clever/lazy and bang them open on the feeder perches.

( more birds [8 photos] )

( not birds [4 photos] )

thistleingrey

For three years, I've pondered off and on how my current hands could do a bit of narrow weaving again---bands/tapes, not cloth per se. Whether it's weave, sling-braid, sprang, or something else in that direction, having something other than my hands to hold part of the threads' tension seems wise. My hands have improved a bit since I paused my embroidery self-test (for needle-dropping), but not by so much as to change the target parameters.

Susan J. Foulkes has a demo video showing five ways of weaving narrow bands. What's most helpful is its use of a rigid heddle. Tablet weaving is mildly interesting but would require some complicated-for-me setup. Separately, thanks to the spindle workshop as self-test, I know that string heddles of any kind are out.

Available to me: an inkle loom, basic backstrap-weaving instructions for several cultural traditions, and two Stoorstålka kits (backstrap with rigid heddle) acquired on sale---or so I thought, until I opened the kits. Each kit has a strap and a heddle, but the simpler one isn't warped (threaded through). Perhaps it was returned and resold.

Haven't decided yet how to proceed. If I try the fancier kit and mess it up, self-knowledge says that I won't spend US $40 merely to get another pre-warped setup, which means it'll languish. IOW, I should start at the right difficulty level---tough to guess for my current hands. The simpler kit's heddle is a basic one, no extra holes to support picking up, and I understand in theory how to thread it. I'm just wary of things that result in loss of sleep overnight, such as cutting up one raw carrot, heh. Peeling an entire pomelo is fine; cutting daikon and raw potato and onion are fine, in moderation. Carrots are apparently made of adamantium.

(Pickup in weaving is how one gets decorative bits amidst the right-left-right over-under default. Often they're raised a bit relative to the neighboring threads. Pickup is a sprang-type exception, where twining interrupts the usual weft passage.)

Stoorstålka has a cute video on how to start weaving with their kits when the heddle has been warped; Foulkes has a more practical howto that uses a Stoorstålka heddle to make a different band. Another weaver has a chatty video for warping an Ashford inkle loom, which tells me I don't want to do that yet.

ciexmod posting in

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$mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)$

mdlbear

Mixed. A couple of minor high points, including a very nice Thanksgiving (observed) dinner yesterday evening, but enough lows to more than compensate, plus enough problems with both my health, and my abject failure to get those across during my appointment Friday morning, to throw me into a tailspin that I still haven't fully recovered from. Oh, and Leslie Fish died yesterday. There's another bit storythere, too, but it'll wait for another day.

Three walks. One guitar practice, Friday, but after spending the day in a funk it lifted my spirits a litte, as did a little more Dutch on Duolingo. I take what I can get. The top quote of the week, from Paradox of hedonism - Wikipedia:

Happiness is like a cat, if you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.

Apparently the same thing applies to sleep. But it's only 20:48, so I have two hours, more or less, before I have to not-try to put that into practice. If the cats will let me. But I'll stop here, incoherent as this post is, because between now and then I have to compose an email to my doctors. (Or at least their clinic. It's complicated, and a large part of Friday's trainwreck was because I didn't know how complicated it had gotten while I wasn't looking.)

Why Nature will not allow the use of generative AI in images and video So apparently Nature abhors AI.

How about ending with The Illustrated Version of “Alice’s Restaurant”?

( Notes & links, as usual )

Current Mood: tangled
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: Hope Eyrie

ysabetwordsmith

Dreamwidth is running its December points event.

The standard explanation: For the entire month of December, all orders made in the Shop of points and paid time, either for you or as a gift for a friend, will have 10% of your completed cart total sent to you in points when you finish the transaction. For instance, if you buy an order of 12 months of paid time for $35 (350 points), you'll get 35 points when the order is complete, to use on a future purchase.

If you're gift-shopping for anyone on Dreamwidth, or you wish to support a favorite community here, points or paid time offer a great way to do that. Now is also a good time to buy them for yourself. Support the platform that keeps us connected here.

Current Mood: busy

case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #6904 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 30 secrets from Secret Submission Post #986.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.