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([personal profile] pegkerr Jul. 18th, 2025 01:33 pm)
Last Sunday, Delia called me up to ask, "Hey, do you want to go to Pandafest?"

Uh, sure. What is Pandafest?

It turned out to be an outdoor festival showcasing Asian foods and vendors, held just outside the Mall of America. It was a fiendishly hot day, which was definitely a drawback, but I ended up being super glad I went, and we did have fun. Since it was so hot, a lot of the fried food didn't look too appealing, but with a little hunting, we were able to find a booth selling cold soba salad, which hit the spot nicely. We tried steamed pork buns, fruit skewers covered with a hard candied coating, coconut ice cream with mango, and fried donuts. Yum! There were performers, and we watched the Korean dancers (pitying them a bit for having to dance in their traditional costumes under the hot sun).

I have been feeling so sick for so long that it definitely felt nice to get out and do something new and fun. Thanks for the suggestion, Delia!

Image description: Foreground Peg (left) and Delia (right). Delia is eating fried donut balls on a skewer. Between them is a "Pandafest: Twin Cities" stick pin. Behind them, center: two Korean woman dancers flourish fans and a tycho drummer are overlaid over a giant inflatable panda. Behind the panda, top: Chinese steamed buns in several different flavours.

Pandafest

28 Pandafest

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McD's hired a company called Paradox.AI to run an "AI" chatbot to conduct hiring interviews for its restaurants. Pretty basic stuff. I'm a little unclear as to how much of the application/interview/hiring process Paradox was responsible for, but it at least conducted an online interview with the applicants.

There was a recent data spill from Paradox that exposed "64 million records, including applicants’ names, email addresses and phone numbers." That's a lot of records. Then again, McDonald's has a lot of locations and high turnover.

Security researchers were able to get in to McDonald's access portal by guessing their password. Said password?

1
2
3
4
5
6.

I guess I'd better change the combination on my luggage.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/07/poor-passwords-tattle-on-ai-hiring-bot-maker-paradox-ai/


The most common passwords for 2025, thus far, are:

123456
123456789
qwerty
password
12345
12345678
111111
1234567
123123
1234567890

https://www.passwordmanager.com/most-common-passwords-latest-statistics/


Now, here's the ridiculous part: it would be pretty trivial for the programmers at Paradox to BLOCK THE USE OF PASSWORDS LIKE THIS! These are common patterns, and it would be easy to test the password and say "NO! You have to use a good password!" There are APIs that enforce good password measures, and clearly they are not using them.

Paradox should be black-listed as a company not to do business with if they allow passwords like this.

Oh, and other Paradox clients? Several Fortune 500 corps including Aramark, Lockheed Martin, Lowes, and Pepsi.
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([personal profile] jhetley Jul. 18th, 2025 06:50 am)
Air temperature 67 F, wind northwest gusting to 23 mph, partly cloudy. Dew point 57 F. Temp was 70 F when I got up. We have broken free of the malarial miasma of the last few days. Did not get any rain in the process. Trash out.
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([personal profile] jhetley Jul. 17th, 2025 06:25 pm)
Tornado warning north of us. Sparsely inhabited area, as is much of Maine north of us. Warning came up on PBS news . . .
lydamorehouse: (ichigo hot)
([personal profile] lydamorehouse Jul. 17th, 2025 09:26 am)
I finished watching Apple+'s Murderbot series last night. I will not spoil the show for anyone but I will say that I spent the first half of the last episode EXTREMELY STRESSED OUT thinking that the producers might take the story somewhere it had never gone in the novellas/novels. The friends I was watching with probably did not appreciate my feelings, but I couldn't help but saying, "I don't like this" a lot during those first fifteen minute or so. Things turned around and returned to 'true,' as it were, but there was a bit of sloppy writing that may haunt me for the rest of my life. beware: spoilers! )

But, otherwise, I'd give the series a big thumbs up. It was more than decently faithful to All Systems Red and many of the changes were improvements. I have more to say about it, some of it slightly less than glowing, but since it's still quite new, I will save much of my critique for in-person panels and private discussions. 

We also ended up watching The Ying Yang Master Zero, which I really loved. It features a semi-historical figure Abe no Semei, who like King Arthur, just gets a lot of play. 

I'd talk more about it, but I need to run off to take Shawn back to the knee doctor. She's develop a new pain in her knee and so we're off to make sure it's nothing serious.  
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([personal profile] jhetley Jul. 17th, 2025 06:42 am)
Air temperature 67 F, wind south about 7 mph, fog at the airport but just cloudy at our lower elevation. High today supposed to be around 80 F. Should be able to get a walk in without dying.
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([personal profile] lydamorehouse Jul. 16th, 2025 10:44 am)
 I'm 26% into Emma Mieko Candon's The Archive Undying. I would be further, but I had lost my headphones and it took me a while to get some new ones from Menards. I can listen to it out loud, as it were, but Mason is often home during the day these days. He plugs in for his stuff, I plug in for mine. It's what we do. 

Am I enjoying it? It is very weird, but also extremely compelling, so yes. Basically, right now, it's a 100% my cup of tea. It is, however, 18 hours long. So, I may have to take a break from it and listen to System Collapse by Martha Wells, since that just popped up as available--and her books just don't become available very often!

Otherwise, I'm feeling kind of crappy on this rainy day. 

Don't get me wrong, I love the rain. I REALLY love that it's currently 63 F/ 17 C. Talk about my kind of weather. I would live full time somewhere where it never got warmer than this, if I could. I'm not sure there's anywhere on the planet that fits that bill anymore, however. 

Which is part of what I'm feeling crappy about. It's all existential dread. Like, I woke up this morning to an article in our local paper about how St. Paul is considering another property tax hike. And, I love social services! But, we are starting to get priced out of a house we have owned since 1995. The worst part is that things are only going to get worse as states and cities struggle to make up the deficit due to the lack of Federal funds. The stuff I actually WANT my Federal taxes to go to.  I don't want to pay for war or ICE deportations, FFS. I want  foreign exchange students in colleges, lunch programs for pulbic schools, a social safety net for all, and housing for the homeless. All that "woke" shit. 

Trying to fight it feels so hopeless. We don't have the votes in Congress to stop him. The Supreme Court has checkout. There are no checks or balances. It all feels very fucked. 

So, I skipped my PT session for today. I'm not writing at my writing Zoom. I'm just going to make a yummy lunch for Mason and myself, write letters to friends, and try to re-center as the world feels like it's spinnning off its axis. 

I did at least have a really fun session of my Thirsty Sword Lesbians campaign last night. That's something. I need more things like that right now. What are you doing that's good and fun? Reading anything worthwhile? Got any fun plans? Any good news at all that you'd care to share?
This is the recipe that I used:
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/141169/easy-indian-butter-chicken/

The major prep is doing a fine dice on the onion and cutting up a pound and a half of chicken into bite-sized pieces. Not a terribly expensive recipe - if you have the spices - I'd guess the chicken, tomato sauce cost, and cream to be under $20 or so. I did not have the spices, so that cost me another $13ish, but those will be usable for a few more iterations. It also makes for a busy stove: I had three burners plus the oven going: rice, sauce, onion reduction, and the oven was cooking the chicken.

VERY high-fat recipe! A cup of butter and three cups of heavy cream! I made it with rice and there was way more sauce than needed, if I use this recipe again I'm going to cut the amount of sauce by at least a third. Milk Street has a recipe that uses some sort of cashew puree, I'll be investigating that.

VERY yummy recipe! But as I said, also quite high-fat.
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([personal profile] jhetley Jul. 16th, 2025 06:51 am)
Air temperature 68 F before 0700 hrs, dew point 66, wind near calm, partly cloudy. Supposed to reach 90 F or above this afternoon. AQI "moderate" and pollen high. Walk contraindicated. Hope my small friends with permanent fur coats are staying inside . . . .
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([personal profile] jhetley Jul. 15th, 2025 01:01 pm)
I see that a Governor is asking for an investigation into the National Park Service over that Grand Canyon fire. I don't know the politics of said Governor. Are we looking for decades of mismanagement here, or short-staffing due to budget cuts that prevented adequate and timely response?
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([personal profile] jhetley Jul. 15th, 2025 06:49 am)
Air temperature 66 F, wind near calm, fog. Visibility under a mile at the airport, about half a mile here. Air temperature up to 90 F this afternoon. Foraging day.

Watched one of our fancy rats climbing the utility pole out front, reach the top and contemplate reaching for the high voltage line, and then back off. We still have power . . .
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([personal profile] thewayne Jul. 14th, 2025 09:58 am)
Bill is, in my ever so humble opinion, one of the most brilliant musical comedians. I'd rate him up there with Tom Lehrer and Eric Idle and above them in many ways (Peter Schickele is still #1 for me). If you ever want to have a lot of fun, just cruise YouTube for Bill Bailey videos and you should have a good time.

In this one, he pays tribute to one of his favorite bands, one of the first techno bands, Kraftwerk.

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([personal profile] jhetley Jul. 14th, 2025 11:04 am)
Nice meet-up with Ms. Sasha, including an extended petting session on her front steps. Got home and cooled off and had a robot tell me that I have one prescription ready for pickup. At the pharmacy I had just walked past . . .
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([personal profile] lydamorehouse Jul. 14th, 2025 09:05 am)
For [personal profile] sabotabby who is probably still on vacation and anyone else who might be interested, here's a link to our American Flagg episode of Mona Lisa Overpod: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4yFxNh4m8xcnHhLC3MB38Z  

Speaking of podcasts, I had a very odd interaction with a potential panelist on a panel I proposed for Diversicon. I've been, as you know, gentle reader, fairly obsessed with doing programming committee work for a completely DIFFERENT covention, and so I haven't much talked about the fact that I will be one of the Guests of Honor at Diversicon 32, along with Naomi Kritzer. Diversicon is a local to me (Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN) convention and is coming up soon!  September 5-7!  

So, what happened was this: I got an email from someone in programming connecting me with a potential panelist. The initial email was very straight-forward. This person has been writing radio plays for a podcast down in Florida called the Radio Theatre Project. Sounds like a decent fit, right? But, this person added this to their communication with me, "I'd be happy to talk to Lyda and come up with a presentation" (emphasis mine). I wrote back and said, "Sure! I'm happy to try to figure out a way to combine our similar expertise into a panel of some sort.  My podcast isn't fiction and I do none of the technical aspects of recording, editing, or producing it, but I'm sure there are some commonalities."

Immediately the other panelist seemed to want to back off, however. They talked about how "my audience" might not be interested in the things they were doing and that the two types of writing were fundamentally different. I acknowledged that, but tried to encourage this person, anyway, by saying that, yes, that's true, but podcasts are a thing in general and I'm happy to spend some time on the panel talking about the things they do and the things I do. This seemd to mollify this person, briefly.

BUT then they proposed getting together for a coffee to hammer out our "presentation" or to at least come up with talking points.

I have to admit, y'all? I was very confused by the continued use of the world presentation.

I had to write back and say, "It's a panel discussion, right? Something informal and off-the-cuff?"  I told them I am always happy to pre-consider questions that might highlight this or that, but, like, this is one of those situations, I thought, where "this meeting could be an email." I did, however, try to say this kindly and suggest that while I was not against getting together for a coffee, per se, a panel discussion (if that's what we were having) wasn't probably worthy of something so intense. 

I guess I pissed his person off somehow? I didn't mean to!

But, surprise, surprise, this person has now declined the offer to be on the panel with me.  Which would be FINE, except for the fact that they felt the need to leave with this parting shot: "I listened to your MLOP 27: American Flagg podcast about cyberpunk. It is very focused and detailed. It offered a wealth of information for fans of serious science fiction. I'm not a serious sci-fi fan. I don't have the background and experience to speak about this kind of podcast. I've also found the easiest way to kill the humor in almost anything is to analyze it.

Like, is that directed at me?  Or is this person saying that they don't want to analyze their own humor for fear of destroying the fun in it? (Their radio plays are humorous, apparently.) I decided to go with the latter, because it does no good to make enemies in a convention pool as small as Diversicon's. So, I told them how sorry I was that they have chosen to opt out and hoped that we could at least meet and chat at the con. 

But the entire exchange was so baffling, you all. I know this person at least a little. Their name is familiar to me. They are NOT a stranger to the local science fiction and fantasy scene. They know what SFF convention panels are. The fact that they kept calling it a presentation has actually made me a little terrified that I'm actually going to be the ONLY person on this panel. SHOULD I BE PREPARING A LECTURE/PRESENTATION?????  I am now a little fearful that maybe I should be!

I wouldn't be paranoid about this, but this has happened to me in the past. 

I once proposed a panel for (I think) MarsCON about manga and manhwa and, when I arrived at the convention and got my hands on the program booklet, I discovered that I was, in fact, the only person talking about this subject FOR AN HOUR. Luckily, in that case, it wasn't until the next day and someone (Anton, probably,) had asked me if I needed any technical support for my panel/presentation and I said, "Okay, yes? Gimme some way to run a powerpoint presentation," and I went home that night and MADE ONE UP. I think I had exactly 5 people in the audience, but they were happy to see the covers of some titles I recommended, etc. 

JFC.

If it is just me... what am I going to talk about for an hour by myself about podcasts? I mostly listen to fiction podcasts, but if people are there, as this proposed panelist suggested for my particular podcast, I don't know that there's enough to actually say about what it is that we do. I mean, Ka!lban does most of the hard work and I just show up and talk about whatever it is we've chosen as a topic. That's it. That's my entire experience. I don't know how this could possibly fill an hour!

I guess I'll find out!
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([personal profile] jhetley Jul. 14th, 2025 06:42 am)
Air temperature 61 F, wind south about 7 mph, fog at the airport. Visibility under half a mile there, far side of the park visible here. We remain under the boot-heel of the oppressor.
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([personal profile] jhetley Jul. 13th, 2025 12:58 pm)
Roadkill limited to another loser crow, a flat squirrel miles away from the crow, and numerous blood patches on the road without corpse for ID.

Mullein blooming, both common and "moth" varieties, possible butter-and-eggs, and the usual suspects. Honeysuckle berries turning red, likewise the sumac, and the seed heads of the curled dock have gone to the brown of ripeness.

Got on the bike, up to the country club and over to the road through the bog and thence home. Getting warm out there. Did not die.

15.34 miles, 1:25:45
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([personal profile] jhetley Jul. 13th, 2025 07:24 am)
Emptied the thistle seed feeder yesterday and washed it, hung it out to dry. Brought the empty feeder in this morning and filled it and hung it out again. By the time I got back inside and started to mix up some frozen orange juice, a chickadee was collecting seeds . . .

Air temperature 61 F, wind south about 7 mph, cloudy. Will probably get out for a bike ride later. Rest of the week looks to be nasty hot.
Not long ago, Google released an update that slammed the batteries in the Pixel 4 phone. That phone had batteries from two different makers, and it was found that one of those batteries did not age gracefully, the update greatly reduced its ability to charge to reduce its likelihood of bursting into flames. They also offered various compensation schemes to get the battery replaced or retire and replace the phones, but the hoops they put in place for said compensation were rather onerous.

Well, the circle has come around again and now it's the 6a's turn. But this time, the phone isn't particularly old. This one still has two years of updates available, and the compensation is higher than what was offered to owners of the 4. But it appears that the terms are just as bad, you'll need to make sure the screen is absolutely perfect and that there's nothing else at all wrong with the phone and that you read all the fine print before you try to comply with any of the terms.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/07/a-mess-of-its-own-making-google-nerfs-second-pixel-phone-battery-this-year/

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/07/11/1921242/google-nerfs-second-pixel-phone-battery-this-year
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([personal profile] jhetley Jul. 12th, 2025 07:18 am)
Air temperature 63 F, south wind about 5 mph, fog at the airport. Our lower elevation seems to be below that particular cloud. Morning errand, then walk? Lethargy rules. The world can fix itself.
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([personal profile] pegkerr Jul. 11th, 2025 12:35 pm)
My nephew David got married this past weekend, on July 5, which happened to be my 39th wedding anniversary, which was rather bittersweet. We had family come in from out of town, so some of them got to meet M, which was a delight.

There was a July 4th welcome party at my sister's home, and then the ceremony the next day wonderful--so well-planned and heartfelt, and everyone had a marvelous time.

Unfortunately, I am not yet recovered from this terrible cold, and so I didn't stay for the dancing. I had to content myself with the videos and pictures of my family dancing late into the night.

Compare the collage made for one of my other nephew's wedding three years ago, Janus.

Image description: A couple smiles at the camera, fireworks exploding in the background. Overlaid over the fireworks are a semi-transparent clasped woman's hand and man's hand, each wearing a wedding ring. Lower left corner: a wooden box planted with wildflowers with the words "Welcome: We're so glad you're here. David & Jordan 7 . 5. 25

Wedding

27 Wedding

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