What counts as lucky in a polycrisis

Reading up on aftercare for chemical weapons exposure and I can’t decide how to feel about the way it overlaps my existing practices for wildfire smoke season… Take the win, I guess.

It really is a relief when the necessary defenses to different aspects of the polycrisis are not in conflict. I remember dealing with wildfires and a heatwave during early covid lockdowns in 2020. Back then before the PNW heat dome, hardly anyone had a/c so we needed to open the windows to deal with heat, but we needed to keep them closed to keep the smoke out. We couldn’t socialize indoors due to covid and couldn’t socialize outdoors due to smoke.

The Beaverton spoke to my heart:

“Marginalized communities are often hit hardest by situations like this,” says Cablebill, “because they do not have easy access to resources that would enable them to be neither in nor outside.”

Romantic thought experiments

Heated Rivalry is such a good example of why I think romance is speculative fiction <3

What do haters say about romance? It’s unrealistic, it’s contrived. What is the standard response from fans? “It’s fantasy.” Undervalued form of thought experiment.

What is the other big complaint that haters have about romance? “You know what’s going to happen.” Romance stipulates a happy ending, so the speculative “what if” question is “what if this unlikely pair got a happily ever after?”. A lot of the time, that requires warping the world somewhat!

When people complain that romance is unrealistic or predictable, they are missing the point. Those deviations from our world are the experimental results of asking “what if?”. Those are the speculations.

What would Stanley Cup games look like if gay hockey players always got happily-ever-after endings? Different!

Anyway, I know there are lots of genres that mix romance and traditional speculative fiction genres, but I like to think about the speculative power of the romance elements themselves.

It’s good to do thought experiments about nice things happening to people, having the hottest possible time, and everything working out.

Birb journal

I have yet to find anyone who keeps bird notes beyond a list on ebird, so I setup my notebook my own way… Little bit log book, little bit nature journal, little bit grimoire.

Sharing because I love looking at other people’s notebooks so maybe you do too.

Photo of a bright blue notebook with a red elastic and pen loop and two ribbon bookmarks

Three sections: a big list, notes by species, and dated session notes… I am contemplating adding a section for omens 🔮

Photo of a handwritten notebook page. Contents Section 1: Life List Section 2: Bird Notes Section 3: Dated Notes

People have different rules for life lists… I have never been a serious birder but I have been a casual birder my whole life. Lot of girl guide badges and relatives who always bring binoculars. So I started my list from the beginning, from memory.

Photo of a handwritten notebook spread. Life List of Birds dedicated to Canada Geese, my first bird memories. A table spans both pages. Columns: #, Common Name, Latin Name, First Confirmed Encounter (Date, Place), Notes. Several birds are listed, starting with Canada Goose.

I thought about including birds I saw in zoos or rescue programs, but when I reflected on animals I have seen both caged and free I decided not too. It’s really different seeing flamingos on the loose.

Most of my notebooks are various grimoires so I am in the habit of dedicating them. Seemed apropos to dedicate each section of this one to a bird.

To make bird notes easy to look up I numbered them in the same order as the life list, but I feel no pressure to fill them all in. I don’t usually reserve sections in notebooks but this seemed worth it. Most commercial/pre-printed bird journals have a reserved section for each species.

Same as the bird list, I added old memories here.

Photo of an open notebook. Each page is divided in half by a horizontal line, and each block is numbered: 71, 72, 73, 74. 74 is filled out: Northern Saw-Whet Owl -- Aegolius acadicus. 24 Sep 2017-- Simon noticed a songbird ruckus out the bedroom window and spotted a lottle owl. Got to watch it all afternoon until it flew off after dark. Marion helped ID from a photo.

I like including notes by bird because it gives an easy way to figure out where to find them. I organize my urban foraging notebook this way too, by plant, so I can easily figure out options for gathering public fennel or plums or whatever.

Video from the day of that Northern Saw-whet bird note in 2017. Little owl sleeping in the city, directly outside my third floor bedroom window. Seems like sleeping in a windy tree might feel similar to sleeping on a boat.

I love this photo because you can see a chickadee perched above the owl, screaming, which is how I notice owls 90% of the time.

Photo taken through a window-- the frame and the slats of blinds are visible. Outside in a green leafy maple tree is a small owl and an even smaller chickadee

Dated notes section is the one part i did not add any retroactive info to. Just free pages to add notes from outings and classes if i want to. My goal is to include sketches even if they aren’t great.

Photo of a handwritten notebook page. Dated Notes - dedicated to Snow Owls and migration. 1 January 2026- Panama Flats (suburban wetland) Victoria BC with [redacted] There is a list of birds, a simple sketch of a turkey vulture wing, and a note that other birders explained turkey vultures have translucent wing feathers, unlike eagles or ravens

Other things I might eventually add to the bird journal: a checklist organized by bird family, space for goals like learning more local bird calls, and, for real, notes on bird omens because they are so dramatic sometimes.

Lol I just want to add that this is a photo of white paper that I took outdoors with southern exposure literally at noon. PNW winter gloom is no joke.

Reading Indigenous Intellectual Property

I’m still on med leave from my interesting job, so I figured I could at least read some interesting work-related books. First up: Indigenous Intellectual Property.

Book cover. Indigenous Intellectual Property: An Interrupted Intergenerational Conversation, by Val Napoleon, Rebecca Johnson, Richard Overstall, and Debra McKenzie. There is an illustration of a red octopus in a contemporary west coast Indigenous formline style.

I finished chapter 1, and Val Napoleon’s framing of Indigenous intellectual property law is rearranging my brain. Here she is referring to laws as a set of knowledge about solving conflicts and problems. Just plopping the reader in the center of a vision about self-determined people supported by a vibrant legal system. Made my little anarchist heart wish for… laws?

Photo of text from a book: We know that enforcement on its own is never adequate to ensuring societal lawfulness or adherence to law, whether intellectual property law or any other area of law. It is necessary to expand the thinking of Indigenous law beyond the limiting notions of "law as enforcement" and "law as rules" towards "law as lived" to empower people to see themselves as legal agents and so act accordingly. Again, one of the future key pedagogical questions is how Indigenous peoples internalize the law from their legal order so that they can take part in its legal problem solving as effective, self-determining legal actors. Law, in its best sense, creates and enables healthy citizenries and communities.

Eternal meme.

Meme of Mr Bean copying test answers from a neighbour. Mr Bean is labeled "anarchists", the neighbour is labeled "Indigenous peoples"

Optimal advent

Photo of a medium-sized corkboard (approx 18" x 24") with rows of colourful paper rectangles pinned on it

Got our little photo advent done in time for December. I just get mini-prints of 25 photos from the year, stick colourful scrap paper on the backs, and pin them on a corkboard. Kiddo flips one per day. When it is done, I put the pics in an album (eventually).

No trash, not much effort, fun for everyone, festive even if you do a very half-assed or messy job of it, and encourages me to actually get photos printed like I always intend to 👍

Poig-nant

I treasure the moment when a podcast host realizes on-air that they’ve been pronouncing a word differently from everyone else. Just got poignant as “poig-nant”.

Is there a name for that type of realization? It happens to and around me a lot. Does this only happen in English?

Mastodon replies from @RadRat on 25 Nov 2025. @beandreams In response to Q1, I have never heard a term for that, but as a person who spends a lot of time mispronouncing words I have only read and not hear out loud, I would very much like there to be one. @beandreams May I propose 'a readerism'? Like a malapropism or spoonerism. A mispronunciation that comes of being a reader. @beandreams Crucially, 'readerism' will be pronounced "red-erism" but we won't tell anyone that until it's too late.

Live tooting the banana slug draft stopper process

Low pain window, let’s goooooo! Banana slug draft stopper!

This project is proceeding at a slug pace / in crip time.

Photo of a wooden table on which is a ratty piece of mustard yellow fabric and a pattern made from 6 pieces of printer paper taped together. In the background are shelves with jars, books, plants, etc

Found the perfect fabric that had previously been designated absolute trash and put in the scrap box. There doesn’t seem to be a slug emoji so I am using this one to express the same emotions 🤘

Close photo of my hand holding a piece of mustard yellow, woolly knit fabric with holes that have been sewn around in black thread to stop them from running. I have pale skin and a black manicure with gold sparkles chosen by a child

Printed the “pattern” which turned out to be a series of jpeg photos of hand-drawn shapes with no scale or pagination. Not so much an indie sewing pattern as a lo-fi punk sewing pattern. Worth it. They are very good slug shapes. Behold! Slug shapes!

Photo of a wooden table on which are laid out flat pieces of mustard yellow fabric: 3 long slug body shapes, a horned slug face piece, and a folded half-circular slug mantle

Lol just realized there is a slug easter egg in the background of some of those photos

Photo of part of a bookshelf, where "Field Guide to the Slug" is facing out, partly blocked by an empty labware bottle

Fittingly the best thread match is this fucked up spool that I think got stepped on.

Close photo of four different beige and tan threads trailing across a piece of mustard yellow fabric

Close photo of my hand holding a spool that is normal at the bottom but devolves into a loose mass of threads at the top

Thread chaos intensifies…

Photo of the top of a sewing machine in the process of loading thread onto a bobbin. The bobbin is fine but the spool of thread has collapsed and has a fountain of knotted loops at the top

Photo of the smashed pieces of a plastic spool

This slug mouth concept is: gathers. I love it.

Close photo of a sewing project made from a medium weight woolly knit fabric. One seam is gathered. Various tentacles hang limply

New record at thread chicken 😳

Photo of the top of a sewing machine, showing a tiny tail of tan thread sticking out from that first doohickey that the thread goes around

Inside-out slug kind of has moth vibes.

Photo of an inside-out slug sewing project with all the raw seams visible. The face has two longer tentacles sticking up like antennae and two smaller tentacles poking down like mouth parts. The body wiggles limply into the background

This tentacle turning technique was inspired by emergency surgery portrayals on The Pitt lol. Put your finger in as a guide, so you know where to press your knitting needle / reusable straw / medical instrument from the inside

Photo of my index finger up to the hilt in a hole IN A SEWING PROJECT

Suddenly it is golden hour, to welcome the pre-viscerated slug. Hello friend.

Photo of a soft slug with no stuffing on a wooden table. It is mustard yellow with four eye stalks and a mantle. The end of the tail is open, waiting for stuffing

At this point I’m just enjoying taking a tour of all my worst craft supplies, but they do keep working perfectly.

This is a washed-but-not-that-clean sheep fleece that I think a friend found in the shed when his collective house was disbanding, and it’s going to make perfect slug stuffing.

Photo of a large blue mesh drawstring bag full of lumpy tufts of white sheep fleece. In the background is a black and white striped rug and the feet of some wood furniture

The peril of crafting on the heating pad instead of an appropriate work surface 🤷

Photo of a half-stuffed banana slug approximately 1 meter long, climbing off my lap onto the back of the couch. My feet are up on the couch and I'm wearing black and white lounge pants

Photo of my ankles sitting cross-legged on the couch. Everything is covered in specks of dried grass

Final reveal: Banana slug! Draft stopper!

nettlekopita?

Today’s small pleasure is that I made delicious spanakopita using a pound of frozen stinging nettles instead of spinach, and because step one is “squeeze as much liquid as possible out of the frozen greens”, I now have about a pint of deep green-black stinging nettle juice in the fridge.

Coma therapy wishlist

At a chronic pain seminar tonight, the OT said, “one thing we often hear is, ‘oh i wish you could just put me in a coma until my current neurons would die and be replaced with new ones that aren’t so highly reactive’, but unfortunately that isn’t how the nervous system works.”

Firstly, lol at “unfortunately”. Love this ally who wants to make coma therapy wishes come true.

Secondly, wanting a temporary coma really is a common fantasy across quite a few chronic conditions. I have personally heard it from people with pain, anxiety, depression, ME/CFS, and also just sleep-deprivation (parents).

I mean

Promo photo of the book My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh, with pink block letters over a classical oil portrait of a woman looking bored or resigned

I am thinking about how often patients are correct in a general or metaphorical way– folks with ME who say they feel like their batteries don’t work and then research turns up mitochondrial dysfunction.

Makes me wonder what version of coma therapy will turn out to work for us all.