elizabethmccoy | Network

conuly posting in

Dear Carolyn: My friends think I’m stupid. I’m a high school junior, and I go to a highly academically competitive school, where it is expected by my peers that you are supposed to take at least three AP classes. My closest friends are taking five. They are constantly stressed, overworked and burned out. My peers believe the only way to get into a “good” college (whatever that means) is to take as many AP classes as possible and to get the highest SAT score as possible. This, I know, is ridiculous on so many levels, but I stay out of it.

Lately, however, my friends have been shaming me for only taking one AP class, and for taking one standardized test vs. the other. I am going to college for musical theater, and admissions for those programs rely primarily on auditions, not grades. So why on earth would I put myself through so much stress if it won’t affect my college admissions? I’ve tried to explain this to my friends, but they think they know better than I. Additionally, they equate my taking only one AP class with being stupid. In the AP class I do take, my friend consistently shuts down and mocks my ideas with her other friends.

I’ve tried to mention the reasons I don’t take too many hard classes, but it’s like talking to a wall. I’ve also explained that since I was diagnosed with ADHD a year ago, I am now more aware of what I can handle. When all else failed, I even mentioned once that I have an IQ of 135 (tested when I was diagnosed with ADHD). I am actually quite smart. My friends stared at me and said, “Yeah… I think they lied to you.”

This hurts my feelings and happens so often that I’ve even started to believe I am stupid, despite all evidence to the contrary. Now I’ve started subconsciously playing into the “token dumb friend” stereotype because that is all I’m surrounded with. Should I not respond and ignore it?
— Stupidly Smart

( Read more... )

oursin

So I think I've pretty much got my presentation sorted for next week at around the right length and with a slightly superogatory Powerpoint, but everybody seems to do these these days, sigh.

And I have got off a review of an article which was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, not bad at all.

And I have read the thesis I was asked to read and am trying to think of some questions which are not, which novelist would you pick to depict the seething tensions within [local organisation therein discussed], because I was going, hmmm, is this Barbara Pym purlieu or not?

And although there have been some hiccups along the road a further volume in the Interminable Saga should be appearing in the not too distant future though there are some niggling things still happening.

And I may have mentioned Doing A Podcast some months ago and the same people have come back to ask me to contribute to another one in their series, for which I realise I ought to do a certain amount of prep.

Book review still hanging over me.

Various matters of life admin.

anais_pf posting in

thefridayfive

These questions were suggested by

melagan.

1. What was the reason you began a Dreamwidth or LiveJournal account (or both)?

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4. How did you pick your user name?

5. If you could change your user name, would you?

The following bonus questions are brought to you by the fact that I (anais_pf) have been unable to access any page of LiveJournal for more than a week (and therefore cannot post to The Friday Five there):

6. If you have a LiveJournal, are you currently able to access it?

7. Do you have any information about why one would be unable to access LiveJournal?

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.

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sovay

I can't believe I dreamed an entire opera whose closing performance by a small local outfit I was all set to attend before it was canceled at the last unavoidable minute. It was a Gian Carlo Menotti from 1948 and had never before received a Boston premiere. I had read its libretto for years because it was full of sand and sea-haunting: No body that presses its mouth to the shore closer than your mouth to mine. No eye that fades into the haze of the sun more fixed than your eye to mine. No ship of a letter that crosses the seas faster than my hand to yours, unless it has foundered, unless it has torn on the black rocks of the heart. It had one of his terse, enigmatic titles, The Visitor. The company that had put it up was called Marmalade and Gold, an allusion whose meaning did not escape the event horizon of waking, and specialized in bare-bones, slightly more than concert performances of oddities or undeserved obscurities of the twentieth-century opera world: I remember perusing the catalogue of previous seasons on their website and approving of their choices, all of which I suspect of not existing outside of the hour or so I was asleep. Erich Wolfgang Korngold did write a bunch of operas, mostly before—very popular choice—leaving Germany, but I do not believe a 1932 Der lahme König was among them. I am having a terrible week for which the external world offers nothing in the way of respite and even if I didn't get to hear any of its music, I appreciate the inside of my head attempting to furnish a break of art.

Current Music: The National, "Don't Swallow the Cap"

stonepicnicking_okapi

The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway. . . .
He did a lazy sway. . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!

( Read more... )

Beloved, Or If You Are Murdered Tomorrow by Elizabeth Acevedo

Watch on YouTube

skygiants

Because Becky Mahoney and I know each other, I boosted a Bluesky giveaway for her upcoming vampire novel Thrall (coming out next month!) in the spirit of friendship and then was somewhat surprised to discover that I had in fact won the giveaway -- surprised but delighted, obviously, since I've loved all of her previous books even when they weren't LUCY CENTRIC DRACULA RIFFS!! focused around a COLLEGE PIRATE RADIO STATION!!!

The central character of Thrall is Lucy Easting, who has just transferred into beautiful, isolated, mountainside Rollins University from community college, in a bid to get away from her stressed and depressed mother and live a life she's excited about for a change.

Alas! her first college party results in a couple of neck puncture marks, a marked tendency to experience severe migraines in sunlight, and a tragic susceptibility to the ominous vampire voice in her head that occasionally takes over her consciousness and directs her towards uncharacteristic action.

Fortunately! the college is full of prospective allies who are willing to take a chance on Lucy despite her regrettable thrall situation, including but not limited to the host of the local college late-night radio show, who has been a target of the vampire since her sophomore year and has been using the airwaves to try and fight back; Lucy's RA, a determined young woman with very nice arms, who came to the school to investigate after a terrible fate befell her high school ex-boyfriend Jonathan; and the very nice, normal party host who has no previous vampire experience but feels just terrible about the whole situation and is not about to relinquish responsibility for sorting the situation out! it was her party!!

It's a really charming book on a number of levels, but my favorite thing about it as a Dracula riff specifically is how much it's thematically invested in Lucy as a side character -- the narrative is consistently very clear that the vampire is not particularly interested in Lucy; he's obsessed with Athena the radio show host and everything else he's doing is part of his elaborate cat-and-mouse game with her, including incidentally overturning Lucy's life as a by-the-by -- and how Lucy makes the book her own story anyway by sheer force of determination not to be cut out of it. Lucy's energy really drives the book: she wants to live, and she wants to live a life on her own terms, and she's not about to let one horrible encounter take that away from her.

Also, I think it's not a huge spoiler ( but I guess is technically a mild one: lesbians! )

stonepicnicking_okapi

Wednesday's word is...

...egregore

An egregore is a non-physical entity or thought-form created and sustained by the collective thoughts, emotions, and attention of a group of people.

Origins and Etymology

The term "egregore" comes from the French égrégore, derived from the Ancient Greek egrēgoros, meaning "wakeful" or "watcher". Historically, it referred to angelic beings known as "watchers" in the apocryphal Book of Enoch. In modern esoteric and occult traditions, the term evolved to describe a collective psychic or spiritual entity generated by the shared focus of a group.

An egregore is not merely symbolic; it is considered to have a form of independent existence, influencing the thoughts, behaviors, and emotions of the group that created it. It can arise intentionally, through rituals or focused visualization, or unintentionally, through repeated collective attention. The more energy, devotion, or attention a group invests, the stronger and more autonomous the egregore becomes.

--

I found this in this YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsvMrDldOpQ

The Patriarchy's Secret Weakness | Why Withdrawal Works with the summary: Patriarchy is not just a system of laws. It is a ghost we keep alive by feeding it. In this video, I explore the concept of patriarchy as a "Stealth Egregore"—a self-sustaining psychological pattern that survives not through our consent, but through our compliance

petrea_mitchell posting in

agonyaunt

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

oursin

What I read

Finished Victoria's Secret - still slightly meh about it - could possibly have engaged a bit with a longer history of 'Monarch has favourite/s who are not Quite Our Sort', even if historically the gender issues in play here were different??? Also had a bit of feeling that QV was not entirely NOT treating John Brown in the light of A Very Large Faithful Dog devoted to her to which she was also devoted and which she insisted on imposing upon people who hated dogs.... Thought it was good on her awful childhood, though.

Clare Pollard, The Modern Fairies (2024) - telling stories about women telling stories, i.e. the precieuses at the time of Louis XIV, the stories they were telling and their stories and how those reflected one another.

Susan Ertz, Woman Alive (1935), my attention having been drawn towards it by a mention of its having been republished. I have a copy of the first edition, Ertz being one of the early C20th middlebrow women novelists in whom I have had an interest going back decades, but not sure whether I ever actually read this. It is sf Of The Period, in which someone is cast forward into The Future by sciento-psychic means, this is his account. And okay, is not (unlike a cluster from around the same time) about the dystopic crushing iron heel of fascistic misogyny, is about the dysoptic outcome of a war in which germ warfare has killed all the women. Except one who has survived courtesy of mad scientist neighbour's experimental process.

Points for her being a young women of education, character, and something of a backstory conveying a certain cynicism, but she still concedes to the agenda of marrying and going forth and having babbyz, though I think everyone is a bit optimistic that she will pop out multiple daughters and even so, we do not think this will Save Humanity. (Also, no-one seems to suggest she should have Plurality of Mates, surely that would be advisable?) But then it just stops with our narrator pinging back to his present day.

Most recent Literary Review

Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington (1988), which I really enjoyed and am now looking out for more of hers - think I have copies of some somewhere?

Robert Barnard, Death of a Literary Widow (1979)- everybody in it is a bit of a caricature, not just the American academic.

Emily Tesh, The Incandescent (2025), because I have been hearing well of it. Pretty good, but is it just having Read A Lot that made one character look like a honking parade of red flags?

On the go

I think I am actually giving up on I Am A Woman, I don't think Being A Sad Lesbian is enough to provide a rounded character? Maybe it gets better?

Nibbling at various things. Realise that it is 2 weeks to next Pilgrimage discussion and I do not want to read Honeycomb too far in advance.

Up next

No idea.

mildred_of_midgard

My technique of "distance push, let legs recover, longer distance push next time" is working! I did 8.2 miles this morning in just under 82 minutes. My last run was 6.5 miles on Saturday. Sunday I was too sore, Monday I was too sore, yesterday I had a database migration that started at 5:40 am, so I couldn't get in my morning run (or even my morning shower).

I'm hoping my legs recover by Friday and I can push for 10 miles, but we'll see. If not, gunning for Saturday.

Since this approach is working, I think I'm going to keep it up for as long as it keeps paying off, then I'll think about mixing it up with some gym cardio activity.

Oh, fitness/muscle/injury notes:

* Left hamstring continues to behave igneously. I think sleeping with the leg straight *helps*, but isn't a cure.
* Left knee (which has partially relapsed) was stiff in places, but mostly fine (it's usually later in the day that it acts up), same deal with the right knee (which is probably paying the price of being neglected in favor of the injured knee).
* Left glutes tight, probably from trying to keep the left knee and hamstring pointed strictly forward.
* Right quads tight, I'm pretty sure, but I have a good stretch for that that I just need to make myself do before my next run.

Left knee: I had stopped sleeping with it unbent, thinking it was healed and I could return to my normal lifestyle, but alas. I've been getting occasional spasms and occasional sliding and popping. I'm now back to a strict regimen, and hopefully it goes back to fully asymptomatic again. But at least it's letting me walk and run.

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

Dear Prudence,

I’m a 21-year-old college student living in a house with five other students. There are three women and three men. We’re having an issue keeping our kitchen clean, and I am the only one who consistently cleans. I keep the floors and counters clean, wash the piles of dishes in the sink, wash dish towels, etc. Anytime I’ve asked people to chip in, they never follow through. I’ve tried not doing the cleaning, but then the kitchen gets disgusting and I end up caving.

I’m not completely innocent when it comes to not always washing my dishes immediately and being messy, but I feel like I clean more often than anyone else. A general chore chart doesn’t work, and I am tired of feeling like my roommate’s mother. How can I get them to take some initiative and do more of the heavy lifting that always falls on me?

—Not a Mother to Five at 21

( Read more... )

oursin

Happy birthday,

james_davis_nicoll and

perennialanna!

sholio

... resulting from making that vid this past week.

One thing that I was thinking about is the sheer challenge of costuming this show, because most of the costumes are directly patterned after their manga/anime looks. So whereas most of the time in most shows, you can probably source the characters' everyday wear from basic mass-produced clothes or even vintage or secondhand shops, aside from really specific superhero costumes or whatever, this is more like a historical production in that everything has to be made from scratch. (Only, if possible, worse, because unless you're doing an unusual time period, normally you could probably go to the warehouses of Elizabethan or Regency costumes or Roman togas that no doubt exist.)

Here, even the relatively normal clothes are directly echoing something specific, like the patterns on

season 2 character's

Tashigi's

distinctive shirt, or

another season 2 character's

Miss Valentine's lemon-patterned

dress.

Anyway, it's just interesting to think about. Even the simplest costumes are more complicated than they seem, because it's not just an unusual shirt that the costume people found at a vintage shop; they're having to explicitly pattern-match or color-match or style-match items from the manga and anime.

( More specific spoilers about characters' fighting skills )

sholio

So this is apparently the latest installment in an accidental series about gardens. This is based off some bits in

hauntinghouses's lovely post-canon fixit Out of the Woods (not necessary to read before this one, but you should read if you like Londo & G'Kar stuff; it's lovely, with some neat Narn worldbuilding), which was in turn inspired by one of my older ones. This is not meant to be in direct continuity with either hauntinghouses' fic or the other fic it was inspired by; it's off happily living its best life in its own AU 'verse.

Green Growing Things (Londo & G'Kar, 2800 wds)
It is post-canon, and there are gardens.

( Fic also posted under the cut )

( Bonus extras from Tumblr )

troisoiseaux

Read The Stranger by Albert Camus and spent the entire time thinking about the Ben Affleck smoking meme, or perhaps a little cartoon man smoking a cigarette and muttering bah in a French accent, which is to say I had a deeply unserious reading experience. I found this book to be surprisingly (darkly) funny, because the main character/narrator, Meursault, just floats through life— including his own trial and forthcoming execution for murder— by responding to everyone and everything with abrupt and odd statements about how nothing matters, actually. Promotion at work? It's all the same to him; nothing matters. His girlfriend wants to get married? Sure, if she wants to; it's not like anything matters. The blurb describes this as the "story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach," which led me to expect that Meursault would be an accessory to murder, or perhaps framed for a crime he didn't commit— especially as, early on, a shady acquaintance has him (Meursault) write a threatening letter to his (the acquaintance's) ex— but no?? He literally just shoots a random guy multiple times at close range for no reason?? Because Life Is Absurd And Nothing Matters, Actually????

In a rare (and only very, very loosely book-adjacent) movie update, I saw The Bride! (2026, dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal) last weekend and it was SO much fun. It is not a particularly coherent movie— it does feel like a sort of Frankenstein's monster in itself, cobbled from about three different premises ("what if Bride of Frankenstein was Bonnie & Clyde?"; "Frankenstein 2: Mary's Revenge, A Feminist Retelling", etc.)— but as a fan of campy horror and classic Hollywood I felt incredibly catered to. I also watched National Theatre's Ncuti Gatwa-led The Importance of Being Earnest, which is in fact as absolutely delightful as it looks. (It's available on YouTube through tomorrow, the 18th, and streaming on National Theatre at Home after that.)

Current Music: The Man I Killed - NOFX

stonepicnicking_okapi

1. Good things first: I updated my soap opera today. I got a lovely Saint Patrick's Day card from

dine.

2. I went running today at the lake, but it was FREEZING and my time was as slow as the first of the year. :( On Sunday, I picked up Minor's prescriptions, three of them were $5 each and the epi pen was...$560! I didn't get it. I asked the doctor to send it to another pharmacy and will use a Good Rx coupon to try to get down to something more reasonable. Epi pen. Like the thing that prevents ANAPHYLAXIS. American healthcare, ladies and gentlemen.

And the boys' father changed our insurance. So we used to pay $50 for specialist visits, but now Minor's 20-minute visit to the allergist was...$311. I feel like I need a lie down and a cold compress and smelling salts every time I get a healthcare bill these days.

3. I had an awkward conversation at dinner last night and I came to realize that I have no idea how Minor's brain works, and after a long, long discussion trying to understand, many questions trying to tease out his logic, I still don't understand him. And he said some hurtful things among other things, I am 'a character' to him. :( I wish I were a character in my own fanfic! What a wonderful world that would be.

4. I have a new lady client on Thursday and Friday. We'll see how it goes.

5. Diet isn't working. I am trying to track my calories but failing. I got a year subscription to My Fitness Pal app so I can just scan the barcodes but I am not doing a good job of keeping up with it. The good thing about the diet is I have access to a web portal with Monday, Wednesday, Friday new 20 minute workouts with the Australian/New Zealand young lady screeching at you (not the British lady with the beautiful wife who runs the programme) and it is strangely motivating to do it and finish so she can rest her voice.

6. I got the Netflix (for BTS comback!) and watched Kpop Demon Hunters. It was okay. It was a bit too close to home at the portrayal of kpop fans for me. I feel SEEN and I don't want to be SEEN. But I didn't mind them poking fun at the 6-pack abs phenomenon among kpop idols.

My favorite Irish YTer:

Watch on YouTube

I blatantly stole this from

dine:

Watch on YouTube

sovay

For Saint Patrick's Day, I had a foreign body removed from my eye and was immunologically shot in the shoulder. Who needs booze?

Current Music: Molly Donnery & The Ciderhouse Rebellion, "The Town of Ballybay"

oursin

Am still being harried by spam from those dodgy-sounding conferences of very little relevance to my actual interests, happening in v attractive places:

International Conference on Time Series and Forecasting (ITISE 2026) (wot is this even), Gran Canaria (Spain).

6th Current Issues in Business and Economic Studies (CIBES) Conference at the University of Valencia.

13th International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (okay, is brushing somewhere in the region of Stuff I Have Worked On?) in Kyoto.

But really, YOY?

A new twist on this has appeared via my shiny new academic email address: really weird journals giving themselves out as academic that sound totally synthetic -

Journal of High Speed Networks (not as far as I can see associated with even one of the less esteemed academic journal publishers):

a forum in which researchers from academia and industry can address a wide range of topics related to high performance networking and communication and report findings on concepts; state of the art, emerging standards and technologies; implementations; running experiments; applications; and industrial case studies. Coverage can range from design to practical experiences with operational high performance/speed networks including communication network architectures; evolutionary networking protocols, services, and architectures; and network security.

Is this actually edited by a chatbot?

As, I suspect, is this one:

Invitation to Join Mesopotamian Journal of AI in Healthcare (MJAIH) Editorial Board. - there is in fact a website for the Mesopotamian Academic Press (I see they also publish Babylonian Journals of this and that.

Even without the complete mismatch to my actual realms of expertise here I am sceptical about this enterprise.

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

DEAR HARRIETTE: I've recently gone sober for health reasons, and it wasn't an easy decision, especially because my social life has always involved going out for drinks, celebrating with cocktails and bonding over happy hour. When my friends and I went out last weekend, they were pressuring me to drink. I ordered a mocktail, and almost immediately, my friends started to laugh and said that it would be fine to just have one drink. This surprised me because I never thought that my friends would try to force me to do something that would actively have a negative effect on my health. It made me feel unsupported and, frankly, disrespected. At the same time, I don't want to lose my friendships or isolate myself socially just because I'm choosing not to drink. Now I'm anxious about future outings. I don't want every dinner or celebration to turn into a debate about my personal choices. How should I talk to my friends about setting boundaries without making things awkward? -- Sober

( Read more... )

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

Dear Eric: My husband and his ex-wife have 50/50 custody of their 15-year-old son. I despise this child. He is completely useless, rude, disrespectful, selfish, ungrateful and lazy. All he does is stare at his computer screen. I have carefully planned my entire life schedule around his schedule, to avoid being at the house on the days he is there for my husband's 50 percent custody.

My husband has just told me that his ex-wife is moving to another state far away and that he is going to take full custody of his son. This means the child I despise so much is now going to be living with me at my house full time, every single day, and there's nothing I can do about it. My husband refuses to let his son move away with his ex. How do I manage this?

– Fed Up

( Read more... )

Profile (About Me)

elizabethmccoy

July 2019

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Page Summary

conuly in agonyaunt - (no subject)
oursin - One thing after another, really
anais_pf in thefridayfive - The Friday Five for 20 March 2026
sovay - Everything I love is on the table, everything I love is out to sea
stonepicnicking_okapi - Poet's Corner: The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes & Beloved...by Elizabeth Acevedo
skygiants - (no subject)
stonepicnicking_okapi - Word: Egregore
petrea_mitchell in agonyaunt - AAM: how do we hire people who won’t be alarmed by our cardboard coworker?
oursin - Wednesday saw a HERON standing in the eco-pond!!!!
mildred_of_midgard - Another personal record
conuly in agonyaunt - (no subject)
oursin - (no subject)
sholio - A handful of random One Piece Live Action thoughts ...
sholio - Babylon 5 fic: Green Growing Things
troisoiseaux - Weekly reading (etc.)
stonepicnicking_okapi - Views & News Day: Luck o' the Irish edition
sovay - He tried to run away, well, she hit him with a hammer
oursin - Who DO they think I am?
conuly in agonyaunt - (no subject)
conuly in agonyaunt - (no subject)

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Style: Wisteria for Nouveau Oleanders by branchandroot
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Elizabeth McCoy

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(no subject)

One thing after another, really

The Friday Five for 20 March 2026

Everything I love is on the table, everything I love is out to sea

Poet's Corner: The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes & Beloved...by Elizabeth Acevedo

(no subject)

Word: Egregore

AAM: how do we hire people who won’t be alarmed by our cardboard coworker?

Wednesday saw a HERON standing in the eco-pond!!!!

Another personal record

(no subject)

(no subject)

A handful of random One Piece Live Action thoughts ...

Babylon 5 fic: Green Growing Things

Weekly reading (etc.)

Views & News Day: Luck o' the Irish edition

He tried to run away, well, she hit him with a hammer

Who DO they think I am?

(no subject)

(no subject)

Profile (About Me)

July 2019

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