A friend gave me a ton of lily and dahlia bulbs, and time is running out for me to plant them (summer is nearly upon us here), but bulbs are trouble out here because if I plant them outside the yard the deer will chow on them before they bloom (they’ll eat anything but daffodils, which I guess taste very bad), and if I plant them in our fenced yard the armadillos will sneak in through the bull fencing and root them up in their eternal quest for grubs. Periodically the yard looks roto-rooted since the armadillos plow through it completely. And if I plant them in the stone flower beds by the house the dog will dig them up because that is the best place to dig a hole for a nap, even though we have sprinkled a lot of hot pepper flakes all throughout that area. And new nap-holes must be dug every week because the old ones lose their luster very quickly for reasons I don’t understand. So the bulbs will just have to go in pots. It’s not what I want, but it’s good to make a decision that will actually yield flowers.
My friend dislikes text adventures. Actually, he loves the idea of them, and all the things you can create with the medium, but dislikes typing in commands (he got confused playing Eat Me on what to do next. I mean, there’s Pokerounce right in front of you. Eat him!!!)
So, I got him to play Bogeyman. He seemed much more interested by the idea of CYOA. This was his last message to me:
So I assume he’s finished it and is happy. 
a bit of a cheat bc it was yesterday, but I rechecked erstwhile’s placement in the ifdb highest rated twine games and as of current it is in the top 10
Clementines for breakfast, and lactose-free milk in the house. Slept a decent amount last night. Had a great time writing with Jinx. It’s a lot of fun writing in the mafia verse. Last night, we ended things off by chatting and basically brainstorming for funsies about our characters, and that was a total blast. Ice for the waterbottle, too- I’m really fond of the spout on it. Much easier to drink from than the Nalgene- though you can’t beat durability and light weight on those.
Also recommended a few really fun channels to Dan last night- a cartoonish villain sounding set up of a guy with an eel pit, a man who wanders the beautiful coastline with a go pro strapped to his head, and a Floridian who fishes and catches absolutely wild finds in his area, both native and invasive species.
I was reading this neat article about a new technique to complement CRISPR, and would allow the insertion of whole genes without damaging existing genes and causing cancer. CRISPR, for those that aren’t aware, is more like a scalpel, limited to small insertions or precision edits. As I was reading it, I thought, @AmandaB would appreciate this article if she hasn’t already read about it herself, so I decided to come here and share it. Also figured others might be interested:
Oh yah, supercool. Transposons have an amazing history… they were discovered by a hero of mine, Barbara McClintock, who was the baddest of the badasses, a scientist who radically changed everything we thought we knew about genetics (and who, of course, was roundly ridiculed by sneering dullards before it became abundantly clear that she was entirely correct). They are of, course, descended from viruses, as everything that 's interesting about eukaryotic cells comes from bacteria or viruses.
And the term “junk DNA” is something that makes me flinch and I wish people would stop using it, as it’s very misleading.
Small lesson about "noncoding DNA," which is a better term.
This DNA doesn’t function as recipes for proteins, so it was written off as “junk” since the central dogma of biology is DNA–> RNA–> protein. That turns out to be incorrect, like dogma always does. But it’s critical in many ways. There have been many experiments showing that if you remove the “junk” from the genomes of bacteria and viruses, they don’t grow or survive well. If you let them evolve in the lab, selecting for the best-growing strains, and then look at their genomes, they get that DNA back over time, and that process has taught us a lot about how genomes work. It’s clearly necessary for healthy cell growth and function, not least because it serves as critical scaffolding for genomic structure and stability, although there are many other reasons why it’s here. I encourage everyone to read more about all this; its history is a fast-paced thriller full of shocking twists and turns. And there are many more of its secrets to be discovered.
This seems like such a bizarre notion to me. Summer? It’s still winter, let alone spring. And even crazier, planting!?! That is wild. The ground is frozen solid here, after you dig through the snow to get to it. Does that mean you’re having Spring right now???
Maybe more like a mild winter?
I see some plants poking through the earth in my garden, and they are a wee bit early for the season…
It’s 77F right now and is forecast to be 84 on M/Tu. Our property is covered with white and purple wild daisies. The bluebonnets should be coming up in the next week or two-- they always bloom in time for SXSW. I don’t cll it summer until it gets over 90F, which normally happens by May. But I think a lot of Northern-type people would probably consider temps in the 80s summer, which is cute.
ETA:
MI seasons by temp (there’s always overlap):
32°F (0°C) and below, winter.
20°F-55°F (-6.666°C-12.777°C), spring
50°F (10°C) and up, summer.
Yes, you’ll see flip flops and shorts out and about in April and May when it’s 40-50°F(4.444-10°C) if we have an early melt (don’t worry, that early melt is definitely temporary if it’s April, and the coats and boots will be coming back again before spring proper arrives).
I once studied genetics in depth under Gerald J. Stine. He was on the cutting edge at the time. He was instrumental in the study of HIV in the 90s.
It is in the high 70s in SE Texas trending to the high 80s next week. 
My old bones do not like cold weather…
We have 8 degree Celsius (no clue about Fahrenheit). We have crocus, snowdrop, and daffodill blossoming at the same time which I and my father have never seen before! We have weeks with lots of nearly daily rain now.
Back in the city safe and sound. There was a car accident on the road when we drove in. Thankfully no one seemed to be too injured, the man was in his car texting someone, as a ring of about ten firefighters crossed their arms over their chest and stood around in a circle to chat.
I literally fell asleep with the laptop on my chest last night while chatting away to Jinx about our characters. Very pleased I had managed to say goodnight to her before I crashed. Woke up with my laptop on my chest, still open- neck at a weird angle, cat ear headphones smushed firmly in place, and flopsy beneath the covers. Also nice that I didn’t send any devices flying, since the pillows and blankets smushed me pretty firmly into place.
I found this and I wish I could go soooo bad.
The last time I visited Death Valley, it was 126°F (52.222°C) and so dry that a piece of soft and supple pre-sliced sandwich bread pulled from the sealed bag and set aside in the shade, became hard and dry enough to break into croutons by hand in less than two minutes (98 seconds on average if you’re curious, because, yes, we did do multiple timed trials because we’re nerds.). The air just seeks to suck you dry like sweaty soccer kid with a nearly empty capri-sun.
With that said, I am honestly deeply envious of people near enough to visit the ephemeral “Lake Manly” (My uncharitable head canon is it’s secretly a Parks Service injoke among female park rangers; it’s big and majestic and impressive until things get hot and difficult and then it vanishes, never to be seen again.) that has simply appeared like a jewel glittering in the middle of the desert.
The crazy thing is the wildflower season for Death Valley runs late February to mid April, and it should be an absolutely spectacular standout year, what with the valley receiving so much more rain (5x more than normal) in the last 6 months. (I’m curious with the salt flats how much of a brine lake Manly is right now and how that will change as it quickly evaporates.)
On top of that the snow caps will persist into March, so there are once-in-a-lifetime sights to behold. The right photographer could get a shot like the one above, with the mountains and snowcaps reflected into the water, but with the shores and hills erupted into an insane riot of color from the wildflowers, and the front of the literal freaking kayak they’re in poking into the foreground to hammer home they’re boating in Death Valley. Absolutely bonkers image.
If I could walk and was independently wealthy, I’d be on a plane and camping out there for the next few weeks. But I can’t and I am definitely not, lol. So I share this as a way to celebrate how rare this is together and hopefully someone who lives close enough to take advantage reads this and does. If they go quickly enough, they should be able to kayak in the lake as it’ll be deep enough for a few more weeks. It’s not even hot right now, it’s downright pleasant at the moment. The ten day forecast shows daytime highs between 67-74°F (19.444-23.333°C).
In the nearly two hundred years that the Valley has official recordings, it has only flooded twice. Once, in 2004, and that evaporated in a couple of weeks, and the second time, ever, was since August of 2023, from which the lake has persisted and has been recharged by the recent atmospheric river that hit California. The billions and billions of gallons of water should persist into April, perhaps even early May, before returning to the air. So, that means, that as far as we can tell, a lake materialized for 9-10 months after effectively going extinct tens of thousands of years ago.
I wish I could see it for myself, but I’m also psyched it’s a thing and I’ll get to see some sick pictures over the next few weeks, so those two have to at least wash to a neutral, if not a slight positive because I get to share it with all of you.
It’s been some time, but does anyone want to see my design documents (Warning: it’s more of a strategy guide feelie at this point, so there are lots of spoilers) for Welcome to Hellwaters? (It’s for IFComp '24, by the way).
These past few days have been rather fallow on the writing front, even with the partially done strategy guide, so…
Had a spoonful of my mother’s baked apple crumble.
Went to the supermarket today- unlike my old place, it’s considerably smaller but somewhat more convenient.
Guess what? Vanilla ice cream was on the shopping list. To go with that apple pie.
Which reminds me of that one story called You are a Chef! where you go round gathering weird ingredients to cook, well something, and its sequel, which takes place on the IFMUD, called Are You a Chef?
In the latter, numerous people on the mud got turned into vegetables. Another spoiler alert: in Welcome to Hellwaters, IF authors get kidnapped and… well, you’ll see.
Digging through these stuff again- I think the late 2000s were the ‘dark era’ of IF, but are we stepping into another ‘golden era’?
Apple crumble and vanilla ice cream! Yum! With hot chocolate! Even more yum!
A selection of top games from the dark era on IFDB:
2007:
2008
2009
- The King of Shreds and Patches - Details (ifdb.org)
- The Shadow in the Cathedral - Details (ifdb.org)
Lots of light in those “dark ages”…
Nothing better than apple pie / cobbler / crumble with vanilla ice cream. !!!