Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 10
Jul. 27th, 2025 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes
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Potatoes of the Caribbean Soup
Jul. 27th, 2025 07:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Potatoes of the Caribbean Soup
Time: 30 minutes Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients
2 medium onions, chopped
2 teaspoons canola oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons fresh gingerroot, minced
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
5 cups vegetable broth
2 cups sweet potato, cubed and peeled
3 cups fresh kale, chopped
1 cup frozen sliced okra
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup canned diced tomatoes, drained
1 cup canned black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained
2 tablespoons lime juice
Directions
Step 1 -In a Dutch oven, sauté the onion in the oil over medium heat until tender, about 5 minutes.
Step 2 -Add the garlic, the ginger, the coriander, the turmeric, the thyme, and the allspice to the onion and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.
Step 3 -Stir the broth and the potato into the onion mixture and bring to a boil.
Step 4 -Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer the soup, about 5 minutes.
Step 5 -Stir the kale and the okra into the soup.
Step 6 -Return the soup to a boil, cover, and simmer until the potato is tender, about 10 minutes.
Step 7 -Add the milk, the tomatoes, the peas, and the lime juice into the soup and heat through.
Step 8 -Serve.
[Music] Sabaton: "Legends" (upcoming)
Jul. 26th, 2025 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
For a while now I've hoped that they would tackle some earlier historical subjects - I did like the WWI stuff, but it's a pretty big world out there. So I'm excited that this new album is going to have more variety.
Some of the subjects are obvious based on song title, but others not so much; luckily for us the subject is listed under the lyric pages for each song on Sabaton's website (here)
( Track list )
Started playing Digimon World 3
Jul. 26th, 2025 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Still...

Let's do it Renamon.
Dracula
Jul. 26th, 2025 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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The original. An epistolary novel starting with a young man going on a lawyer's behalf to Transylvania and discovering much trouble there, followed by increasing horrors.
Pickle de Gallo
Jul. 26th, 2025 07:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Pickle de Gallo
Prep Time 25 minutes Additional Time 30 minutes Total Time 55 minutes Servings 6 servings
Ingredients
6 dill pickles finely diced
1 bell pepper finely diced (choose red, orange, or yellow)
1 small red onion finely diced
1 teaspoon sriracha sauce
3 tablespoons fresh cilantro chopped
1 tablespoon pickle brine
salt and pepper to taste (optional)
Instructions
Add the dill pickles, bell pepper, and red onion to a mixing bowl.
Stir in the sriracha. Start with 1 teaspoon and adjust to taste if you like more heat.
Add the chopped cilantro and pickle brine.
Gently mix everything together.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to let the flavors come together.
Serve chilled! Use it as a topping for grilled meats, a zesty taco companion, or enjoy it with tortilla chips.
Notes
This Pickle de Gallo recipe makes 1½ to 2 cups
Serve it with chips, on burgers, tacos, wraps, or grilled meats
For a low-sodium version, rinse the pickles before chopping
Refrigerate any leftovers in an airtight container for up to 4 days. Do not freeze.
Fandom: Hot take(?) - the book is usually better
Jul. 25th, 2025 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This has, historically, been an indication of quality for me when it comes to visual media. At first, it implies that the people who made it actually had to read the material, or had a meticulously-crafted storyboard already in the form of sequential art.
But time and time again, I find myself preferring the original book to the visual media.
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Lore (Grey Falls): Isolation
Jul. 25th, 2025 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Tasha Suri's Burning Kingdoms Trilogy
Jul. 25th, 2025 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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The Burning Kingdoms is an ambitious high-fantasy saga set in an India-inspired secondary world, in which an orphan priestess from an oppressed client state seeking personal and national independence, and the disgraced princess seeking support for her rebellion against her insane brother the emperor, must make common cause. This is a proper epic fantasy with court politics, battles, a doomed (or is it?) romance, dozens of side characters, multiple POVs, the lot.
There is much to like here, though I don’t think it all fully pays off in the end. In part, this is because, in my opinion, the most interesting, developed, and unique character is actually neither Priya (priestess) or Malini (princess), the nominal joint protagonists, but Bhumika, who was herself a priestess in Priya’s order, but during the final submission of their state, married into the new governing nobility. She has a kind of bone-deep pragmatism which expresses itself both in mercilessness and in mercy, and Suri maps her journey over the trilogy towards becoming a leader for a world in which all sides are able to live together with a precise, insightful hand. Meanwhile, as individuals, Priya and Malini have great moments, and their individual storylines (which spend a lot of time apart) are quite convincing as stories and as psychological portraits, but their relationship, which is nominally the core of the series, gets less persuasive with every book. Malini especially gets increasingly flattened as the series goes on, because she has to be a genius commander/coldhearted empress type while also hitting some pretty strained romance beats, and that doesn’t fit together well, particularly compared to Priya, who has more narrative space to grow without messing up the plot-engine, and Bhumika, who basically has the hero’s journey. The whole thing felt like it got a little less expansive with each book, like Suri had bitten off more than she could chew.
However, what she did manage was great. As its own thing, The Jasmine Throne is an enormously successful introductory novel for the trilogy. I loved the way religion exists in this world and in the story. You could say Malini is an atheist or anti-theist, even, while Priya and Bhumika have far more complicated relationships to their gods and the role religion can play as a tool of nationalism and in-group solidarity. Suri takes religious ritual and belief seriously in a way that is rare in SFF, and in that seriousness, she manages to use it to drive a fantastic set of emotional journeys and plot elements. You also get to see so many parts and aspects of this rich world, all described very beautifully, and while I can see how it would be confusing, I enjoy the multiple POVs scattered throughout the book which take us, sometimes very briefly, into the heads of many significant and insignificant individuals throughout the empire.
I am sad that it didn’t quite soar, but it was definitely worth the read.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 9
Jul. 25th, 2025 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Adventures continue. Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes
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2025 Candidate Q&A and Chat Round Up
Jul. 25th, 2025 03:27 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
The election season is in full swing! As part of the election season, we have a chat with our candidates coming up soon. You can also find links to the candidates' answers to your questions at the bottom of this post.
Chats
There will be one public chat with all three candidates that will last 90 minutes. Chats will take place in our public chatroom (Discord).
It is scheduled for:
- Saturday, August 2, from 21:00 UTC to 22:30 UTC – Live chat with all candidates (What time is the Candidate Chat where I live?)
During this chat, chat attendees will have the opportunity to ask the candidates questions not already covered in their platforms, bios, and Q&A, as well as to ask individual questions of specific candidates. New questions will only be accepted for the first hour of the scheduled chat time to make sure candidates have time to finish them all.
We hope that you can join us for this chat!
Please note that though the link to the public chatroom is already active, chatting capabilities will not be enabled until approximately half an hour before the chat begins.
Read on to learn more about using Discord.
- On the login page, you'll need to provide a screen name.
- Once you enter the server, you'll find a list of users on the right and a list of chat rooms on the left. Settings are available via the gear icon on the lower left, near your screen name; there you can choose, among other options, whether you prefer a dark or light chat room appearance.
- There are three rooms available to chat attendees who are not candidates or Elections Committee volunteers: general, candidate_chats, and open_chat.
- General is where you'll find a list of rules for the chats. Please read through these carefully before entering the other two rooms.
- Candidate_chats is where the candidates will answer questions and debate amongst themselves. Only the candidates and moderator will be able to chat in this room.
- Open_chat is where all attendees can participate and talk to each other. We ask that you try to stay on topics related to the election. A moderator will be in the room, so if you have a question for the candidates, you can signal the moderator with o/, the candidate's name, and the question. Use o// if it's a follow-up question to the current discussion.
Q&A
When we posted the Board candidates’ bios and platforms, we asked the public to submit additional questions for them. Once again, our sincere thanks to everyone who did so! We have already posted candidate answers to Q&A questions.
To navigate answers by individual candidate, please use the links below:
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Organ Proteins Reveal How Aging Accelerates at 50 Years Old
Jul. 25th, 2025 06:45 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
Aging is a complex process that plays out differently across different organs, according to growing evidence