Cerulean @Cerulean@dragon.style

Welcome. Primary mastodontal activity will now be here. Refer to @CeruleanK for toots prior to October 2018.

When I went shopping this morning, I saw some licorice allsorts and thought, my tastes have changed some, I should try them. I picked up the container, and the label had a prominent warning that it may contain lead. I put it back down on the shelf because I didn't quite know what to make of that. So that's how I learned that black licorice is contaminated with lead sometimes, and we're just putting it on the label and rolling with it.

I was worried I might run out of Taskmaster soon, but it turns out there have been versions in like seven more countries. The Norwegian one seems good, so I'm watching a series of that as a break from the original, because Series 8 is kind of a downer.

Curse Dale Carnegie for teaching everyone that people will like you better if you find out their name and address them with it.

It took three years, but when I use the apartment building's website, I no longer stare at the header photo the size of a full screen on every page for several minutes waiting for the rest of the page to load in front of it.

Apparently Zork got it all backward, and grues are found in bright places. https://www.science.org/content/article/sunlight-affects-whether-languages-have-word-blue

My phone, a Samsung Galaxy Transform I have been holding onto because I don't need anything better and I like having a physical keyboard, is now too old for Google. Being Android, it demanded to be integrated with my Google account, so it checks into gmail regularly and I can't tell it not to. Suddenly, though, it's an Unknown Device that Google doesn't trust, and every time it tries to check in, Google blocks it and sends me urgent alerts that someone has my password and is trying to use it. I am given no means to vouch for the phone's legitimacy, nor to make it stop trying while it is on. Hopefully I can just ignore it, but I may have to buy a new phone I never use.

Asking English for consistency in its forms is usually a joke, but sometimes it genuinely seems like words are missing. The quality of being honest is honesty. You're telling me there's no "earnesty"? And why is a party offering amnesty never described as "amnest"?

With everyone talking about their recollections of the Bush years and how weird they were in their own way, I revisited the point-and-click game I made in 2004, and decided hey, why not just play it for youtube.
https://youtu.be/l_bS9pnNjfY

The weather thing on the Windows taskbar periodically showing completely false AQI warnings all day is weirdly stressful considering that if they were confirmed accurate I wouldn't really be bothered.

In retrospect it's surprising that it took so long before someone decided to make a Discworld concept album. This is the first as far as I know, it's short, and it's pretty good.
https://youtu.be/K1s5ZiugiZM

"A Monster's Expedition (Through Puzzling Exhibitions)" is calming and eminently satisfying, no matter how challenging it gets. I want to find everything in it.

There is a big wave of furry fandom nostalgia going around, and all I can think of is what a shitshow it all was. It is embarrassing to think I lost so much sleep at ill-run events seeking validation from such a septic pool of petty infamy.

When I was a kid I got to read my dad's Analog magazines (major sci-fi anthology) and I keep remembering this one ridiculous story about a mysterious illness that turned out to be humanity having evolved to require Coca-Cola. This seemed like good news when they figured it out because the cure was readily available in great amounts. But then a scientist gets stuck on a TV show where they go "whoa buddy did you just say evolution is real, that's a controversial take," and the story ends with religious fundamentalists smashing up shipments, blowing up bottling factories, and calling on all god's children to show the devil they don't need his candy water. The whole narrative seemed equally unlikely, but the last part obviously doesn't anymore.

For a very long time I've had ideas for a corporate version of Macbeth, selectively using the original text, in which nobody really dies. It would focus on the cutthroat nature of a business world populated by people who would not starve if they lost their job but still treat every objective of it like life and death. It would be a comic, because I can't make a film. But I have come to realize that as a whole, it is too intractable a puzzle to fill in, and also that pages and pages of old men in business suits would be even more boring to draw than to look at. Instead, I can take a crack at the individual ideas I've had for it as isolated exercises when the mood takes me, which in a way might be better.

It's a good thing WA makes them so easy. I have again done my duty to keep Goodspaceguy out of government on any level. Because the tap water here is good, I also chose the incumbent water commissioner over two challengers who both see the position as something to do while they're retired. That's in their statements. It's amazing how easily people tell you who they are. And you learn other things, like: This light rail they're building, is it good? Well, the overt white supremacist doesn't like it.

All my CDs had been hidden away in the storage bins I got them here in, and I'd been pulling from the same small handful for car listening. Still in a DIY mood, I put together a shoe rack I found on sale last month and bought with this in mind, knowing that they don't really make media shelves anymore. My instinct was just right: It fits my entire collection, and works better than expected. Settling them between the bars angles them upward for easy browsing. I'll put them in some kind of order later when I feel like that, but right now I kind of like looking through the randomness and picking out albums I barely remember anything about.

I've been sleeping during the day and not really sleeping well. But I just got a good 11 hours with the lights on. I guess with the windows blocked, the daytime wasn't quite bright enough to sleep through. Now the pattern should start going long and drifting forward again.

This wasn't going to be as simple as "tape", but I find solutions. I am now fully prepared for when I actually need to use this powerful air conditioner for a few days approximately a year from now.

If anyone nearby has a use for the leftovers of the giant insulation sheet I cut this from (half-inch styrofoam with reflective surface, a 57"x26" piece and a 48"x39" piece), just ask me for it.

The new air conditioner works! Later I should devise a better way to insulate the window around the flimsy exhaust plate, but I'm impressed with how quickly it's pumping heat out of the room. The fridge recovered by itself today too.

As Pride month winds down, allow me to share an idea that, because I'd done the planet symbols, I already snuck into the Cerulea type family and am putting into Anachrony too.

We've gotten accustomed to this ⚧ but have you noticed how crowded it is in the upper left? It balances the symbol but at small sizes it gets all mushed up. And it represents…"both"? Oddly redundant?

I replaced it with a lightning bolt shape. For the nonbinary it represents another equal thing not defined in terms of the first two. For the rest of us it represents the power to change what we want. But importantly, this is not meant to be a different symbol with a specific meaning, nor am I calling for it to replace the original. It is an ALLOGRAPH of the trans symbol. Like the one- and two-storey forms of the letter "a", or the simple and binocular "g", interchangeable to suit different contexts on grounds purely of aesthetics and clarity.

Comparisons to the "queer villain" flag are coincidental but not out of line.