Me buying a discounted book here, splurging on a bulk sale there, all in the touching hope that someday I'll have time to read them all.
#bookstodon #amReading #somedayISwear
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L.J., romantic toiler
@ljwrites@writeout.ink
hometown 4.2.17+hometown-1.1.2
Translator, researcher, writer, and mom. This is my alt for creative writing. Current main project is a novel about a branch of Koreanic people in 1st century B.C.
Avatar is a typewriter with multicolored butterflies on it, found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/susannaht/5092985916/
Display name is a reference to a NYT article referring to writers who don't use LLMs as "romantic toilers."
573 Followers
118 Following
50 Posts
Joined February 10, 2022
The authors argue that archaeologists should separate two questions. First, why did people bury their money? Second, why did nobody return? The first answer often involves saving wealth or keeping valuables safe. The second points toward death, forced flight, lost memories, changing landscapes, or large wars. Together, those forgotten hoards preserve a record of people whose plans ended before they reached home.
– Dario Radley, Why thousands of Roman coin hoards were never recovered, new study reveals https://archaeologymag.com/2026/06/why-roman-coin-hoards-were-never-recovered/
#Archaeology #history #money #ancientRome
Stone tools and obsidian artifacts provided some of the strongest clues. The evidence suggests people often traveled between 40 and 200 kilometers. . . .
. . . Researchers believe these shared traditions point to the exchange of skills and ideas between groups. Knowledge moved across the region, helping people keep useful techniques and cultural practices alive.
. . .
The findings suggest that strong social networks were a key part of life for prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Long-distance connections helped people exchange ideas, maintain cultural ties, and face changing conditions over thousands of years.
– Dario Radley, Ancient social networks helped hunter-gatherers survive in the Caucasus for 30,000 years https://archaeologymag.com/2026/06/social-networks-hunter-gatherers-survive-caucasus/
#Archaeology #history #LjFeeds #prehistory
House sizes became more similar during later periods of the city’s history. . . . At the same time, #MohenjoDaro expanded and grew more prosperous.
Archaeologists have long noted what the city lacks. Excavations uncovered no royal palaces, no giant statues of rulers, and no lavish tombs filled with gold or luxury goods. . . .
Researchers believe city governance played a large role in limiting inequality. Investment focused on practical systems tied to daily life, including drainage, street maintenance, and shared infrastructure. Development along city streets increased during the same period when economic gaps declined.
– Dario Radley, 4,000-year-old Mohenjo-daro study finds ancient city grew more equal over time https://archaeologymag.com/2026/05/mohenjo-daro-grew-more-equal-over-time/
If your main source of traffic is Google search, you should consider blogs that cover experiences that cannot be AI-summarized. . . . The dividing line was irreplaceability: whether the reader needed that specific author to get the result.
. . .
The blog-as-a-business model, involving publishing, ranking, monetizing clicks, and repeating the cycle, is dead. Not dying but dead. The data on all 100 of its supposed best cases says so plainly. What replaced [it] is content nobody else can credibly make, distributed to an audience you own, under a name people actually search for.
– Daniel Stanica, The Great Blogging Collapse: What Happened to 100 Successful Blogs? [Study] https://danielstanica.com/posts/Great-Blogging-Collapse
#google #search #blogs #blogging #writing
![The Great Blogging Collapse: What Happened to 100 Successful Blogs? [Study] | DanielStanica.com —](https://danielstanica.com/_emdash/api/media/file/01KVZQSP4NHF8ERCTCQWJY9ZRC.png)
#WordWeavers May 10 – What are the beauty standards like in your world and do they impact any of your characters?
In the Koreanic communities of 1st century BCE as depicted in my big WIP, fat women are highly sought after. My fat noblewoman MC is a celebrated beauty, making her one of the most eligible maidens (and later widows) in the region. Well, that and her riches and lands, and the chance of being the heir of her father who has no sons — but being famously beautiful doesn't hurt, not to mention a proven track record of fertility from having two sons with her first husband!
The refugee MC is a chubby girl who lost a lot of weight during the deprivation of her flight and poverty, and one way her boyfriend courts her is with lots and lots of food to help her regain her weight and then some. #HistoricalFiction
#ScribesAndMakers May 21: What medium would you choose to depict a visual image of a lake?
A pencil sketch for now, since I'm still learning! 👁👍✏
“If you're asking ‘why a woman [for Prime Minister],’ I don't believe that's an appropriate question in the year 2026.”
– Presidential Chief of Staff Kang Hoon-sik in answer to a question asking whether gender was a factor in selecting Minister of SMEs and Startups Han Seong-sook as the next Prime Minister. Han is on track to be the second female Prime Minister of the Republic of #Korea after Han Myeong-sook, who served in that position in 2006 and 2007.
It's local elections day and I'm just waiting for today to pass so I can move the hell on with my life lol I mean the indications aren't bad, it looks like it'll be a very high turnout for local elections which is generally thought to be a good sign for candidates who are not conspiracy theorists or fascists. It's just that we've had national elections every year since 2024 and two of them are coming after the failed coup attempt (the one last year, the Presidential election, directly perpetuated by the coup as the failed coup leader managed to get himself impeached) and I'm always braced for something unthinkable to happen. I think things will be okay for the most part, but my heart is still frightened and I just want it to be over 😣 #korea
#WritersCoffeeClub May 8 – What experience can you identify as having made you the writer you are today?
As Toni Morrison (rest in power) put it, “If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” I couldn't find enough #historicalFiction that centered queer, working-class Koreans and nonwhite people the way I wanted, so I decided to write some myself. Same with some of what I'm branching out into, like ripped-from-the-headlines angry sci-fi and ecological storytelling.
I think decades of writing fanfic helped, because what are fanworks if not creating stuff you want to see more of in the world for a like-minded community? Fanfic was also how I sharpened my skills and gained confidence as both a writer and reader by giving and receiving feedback.
So basically, the decades-long experience of being an unsatisfied reader might sum it up!
They're singing a sutra down by the thoroughfare, I'm guessing ahead of Buddha's birthday in Korea. It's very calming in the deepening dusk 🙏
#WritersCoffeeClub Jun. 1 – In what ways do your real-world surroundings appear in your work?
I wrote a shaped poem, The Building Across The Way, representing the grid of windows I see when I look out my window at the building facing ours! https://thecarrierbag.org/issues/a-new-leaf/ (Page 1 of Issue 1 of The Carrier Bag)
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I sent in a batch of poetry and flash story submissions a while ago and honestly wrote them off after not hearing back — but hey presto, they want one of my pieces, a narrative poem, for their anthology! It was kind of a complex call for a contest & anthology at the same time, and I sent in what I thought was my strongest piece for the contest and the rest to anthology. The editors evidently agreed with my assessment because they want to use my contest piece for the anthology though evidently it didn't make it for the contest. Like I said... a bit complicated 😅
I wrote the poem to submit to a different call last year for the Year of the Dragon (it is now a Year of the Horse, my guy) which rejected it, so this also marks the first time a previously a rejected piece was accepted elsewhere! Also, in the number and variety of acceptances my publication history continues to tilt toward poetry over prose lol. This one's a modern fantasy/horror about climate collapse, and I'm very excited to share it.
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Idk, I personally don't find it hard to believe cruel and warlike individuals can also be caring and considerate of disabled people 🤷♀️ People are complex and situational, after all, and no one in real life is all good or all bad. I guess a lot of white people (or “White Eyes” as Apache groups called them) were/are too inundated in racism and a flat good vs. evil worldview to apply that kind of nuance to Indigenous people.
[T]he modern conflation of elections with #democracy contributes not only to #plutocracy but also to the drift toward authoritarianism. The danger lies not simply in the plutocratic proclivities of electoral processes or the occasional production of dangerous leaders,but in the way that their misidentification as the embodiment of popular sovereignty enables potential demagogues—often themselves plutocrats—to claim that they uniquely represent the authentic “will of the people.” This grants them an unfounded right to rule that becomes difficult to challenge and undermines popular government itself. Once elections are taken as the democratic tool par excellence, a leader can invoke electoral victory to justify any course of action by insisting: “The people have spoken!”
– Natasha Piano interviewed by Matias X. Gonzalez for Democracy and Government under Elitism: An Interview with Natasha Piano https://www.jhiblog.org/2026/05/13/democracy-and-government-under-elitism-an-interview-with-natasha-piano/
Beer from the Warring States period! https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352409X26001732
“The results suggested that the liquid residue was likely a cereal-based alcoholic beverage with high concentrations of lactic acid and oxalic acid, and a low concentration of tartaric acid, as well as 23 other classes of organic compounds such as amino acids, fatty acids and carbohydrates. Microfossil results further confirmed the primary brewing ingredients were broomcorn millet and Triticeae (wheat/barley).”
(via Pasts Imperfect https://pasts-imperfect.ghost.io/pasts-imperfect-5-28-26/ )
The existence of material #history implies the existence of immaterial history 🧐
In short, as LLMs proliferate they will ‘contaminate’ the training pool, and make it harder and harder to build future models. These challenges may not be insurmountable - one can imagine an army of human reviewers sifting out the “good” code from the bad, or an elaborate series of sandboxes and unit tests to try to improve automatic detection of bugs - but they will certainly prove difficult to overcome.
– Milo Trujillo, Model Collapse https://backdrifting.net/post/082_model_collapse
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One item stood out from the rest, a large dark glass bead decorated with pale wavy lines. Similar beads often appear in women’s graves from the 4th and 5th centuries CE as jewelry or burial goods.
This bead came from a settlement pit instead of a burial context. Because of this, archaeologists think residents may have reused the object for another purpose, possibly as a spindle whorl.
❞
– Dario Radley, https://archaeologymag.com/2026/05/settlement-with-weaving-workshop-in-germany-gravel-pit/
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Oh seriously? THAT'S recognized as a word? And THAT? But not that? Mmkay then.
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@EveHasWords@toot.cat I remember reading that traditionally the distinction between comedy and tragedy was not whether it's funny but that a comedy ends with marriage while tragedy ends with death, so in that sense I guess The Tempest fits!
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Bang-eo (防禦 "block and stop") and subi (守備 "protective readiness") both translate to "defense" in English, but bang-eo is often used in more military and martial contexts while subi is pretty much exclusively for sports, especially non-contact events. English is more like North Korean in this case in mixing up its military and sports terms, it seems.
#WritingPride Jun. 1 – Do you have any queer protagonists?
Most of them are. Souri in A Very Long Malaise is a wlw, appropriately enough for a story appearing in Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast. https://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-301-very-long-malaise-lj-lee Between One Word and the Next, a spiritual prequel to Malaise, is upcoming this year and also features a wlw protagonist and antagonist.
A Maiden's War, my retelling of the Ballad of #Mulan, interprets Mulan as a trans woman. https://corvidqueen.com/stories/a-maidens-war-lj-lee The Dream of the God's Wife explains the mysterious disappearance of Princess Neferure of the 18th Dynasty through the lens of her being a wlw. https://archiveofourown.org/works/7462683
In my big WIP the noblewoman MC and basically all of her love interests are bisexual. (Other than her first husband, who is not a love interest.) The refugee MC is one of my few straight protagonists, I believe.
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[Chokonen chief Cochise] married at least twice, and his second and principal wife was Dos-teh-seh, the daughter of Mangas Coloradas. Although by Chiricahua custom a man should live with his wife’s people, Cochise was already too important a leader to leave his Chokonen band.
– From Chapter 3 of The Apache Wars by Paul Andrew Hutton
I'm rather gratified by this factoid because I have a similar setup in the big WIP where the custom is for the man to go live with the wife's family (at least until the couple's children are grown), but the MC's first husband didn't do so because he was an established leader. Her second husband does follow the custom, which is somewhat ironic because he was an outsider.
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❝
The Apaches quickly scattered, splitting into three groups. [Aravaipa band leader] Beto instructed the novice to draw a line across their trail and say, “Let no one pass over this.” A little farther on he was instructed to do this again and again, until he had done it four times. In this way they escaped the pursuing White Eyes.
. . .
[Lieutenant] Bascom, a promising young officer from Kentucky who had graduated from West Point in 1858, followed an Apache trail headed northeast toward Apache Pass, but then lost it and returned to the fort.
❞
– From Chapter 3 of #TheApacheWars by Paul Andrew Hutton
#amReading #Indigenous #history
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@dnkboston@apobangpo.space Thank you! 💖 I asked them several questions about the permission form and other requirements before I sign so I'm waiting on their answer, but hopefully things can be clarified quickly.
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Also, since I've written a piece for Year of the Dragon (narrative poem) and Year of the Horse (short story in verse?) respectively, I suppose I should do one for Year of the Ram — which seems all the more imperative because I was born in a Ram year myself xD No idea yet what I might write about, since I grew up in a culture with very little goat or sheep lore (we don't even HAVE native sheep!). Maybe I'll just draw a goat or sheep in celebration and be done with it lol.
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@vicorva@mastodon.art Thank you :blobcat_aww: Yeah it is a big boost because I put a lot into that piece, it's gratifying that someone else sees it too! 💖
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Oh wow I hadn't even thought of this word in years, didn't actually think it would be accepted when it came to me but it was, fascinating xD
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85% and I'm probably tapped out, and got in a few I stumbled on by sheer chance... but there might still be a couple of obvious ones I missed out on, eh? We'll see!
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123 words found is a nice neat number though, maybe I'll just leave it that way xD
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@vicorva@mastodon.art I like it — it gets across so much in such a simple action! (Yiba is methodical, some kind of non-hominid mammalian being, and enjoys sorting rocks.)
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@vicorva@mastodon.art Amusingly enough, you even have a setting (from The Old Goat) where mongeese would fit right in xD Not that you have to reuse it, of course, but you're just such an animal-friendly writer!
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@mrundkvist@archaeo.social I'm willing to believe it's better than my nonexistent skills! xD Also something about the discipline of archaeology seems suitable to fermented foods...
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@hannah@posts.rat.pictures Can't afford to have a piano dropped on your head? Flying anvils got you tangled? Give BONK a call today!
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@LeoKirke@retro.social Instance name checks out (sorry I don't have anything helpful to add, I just squeed at the Gibran mention and I love old books)
For Nabû, august, majestic and awesome heir, firstborn son of Asarre, foremost of all, who bears the tablet of destinies of the gods, whom the Igigi gods respect most in the entire universe, my lord, I, Šamaš-riḫtu-uṣur, son of Šamaš-iddina, the baker of Šamaš and Aya, with joy in my heart went out to the open countryside. I picked up some clean clay and brought it from the holy clay-deposit. I loaded(!) it on my shoulder and transported it. For my good health, for a long life, for well-being, for the well-being of my father’s household, my own stability and my successful raising(!) of a family, I(!) wrote (this) tablet. I(!) sent it in to the gunnu-container, to the porter of the door of E-babbarra. O tablet, when you enter, [intercede(?)] for Šamaš-riḫtu-uṣur, son [of Šamaš-iddina! … ].
– Notation by a Babylonian student on his dedicated scribal tablet, MS 5007, from Shana Zaia, Gods in the Classroom: Religion and Education in 1ST Millennium BCE Babylonia https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/iraq/article/gods-in-the-classroom-religion-and-education-in-1st-millennium-bce-babylonia/EB059EE81804DCBC1848CACBD6298E0B via Archaeology News Online Magazine https://archaeologymag.com/2026/09/how-babylonian-students-learned-about-gods/
First ever fully organic 100% on #HarvestGame! 🎉 Honestly I didn't know all the words in advance; I just cast around before I landed on some of them, and the final one was a previously unknown word that I got with basically a glorified keysmash only made possible because I knew the exact number of letters in the word I was looking for. Anyway, feels good to have a total win in today's tiny game and looking forward to seeing who will join me xD https://harvest.meadow.cafe/
#Mexico had in fact abolished slavery in 1829[.] All of the leaders of Mexico, in itself only an independent country since 1821, were personally opposed to slavery, in part because of the influence of emissaries from the freed slave republic of Haiti. . . .
The Mexican armies that entered the department [of the state of Coahuila y Tejas] to put down the rebellion had explicit orders to free any [enslaved people] that they encountered, and so they did. The only person spared in the retaking of the #Alamo was Joe, [enslaved by] William Travis.
– James W. Russell, Slavery and the Myth of the Alamo https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/slavery-and-the-myth-of-the-alamo
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I wouldn't use the official b2 client for backup, retrieval, and other jobs on b2, though, since the client lacks some essential functions like wildcards. Rclone is really good for these purposes after setting up a b2 profile, and that's what my daily backups run on. In fact I saw a BackBlaze employee replying to a Reddit post recommending rclone for backup management 💀