Weekly Links: August 3rd
I'm going to start doing little semi-weekly dumps of things I think are interesting or cool. This is kind of stuff I was putting at the end of my newsletter before I stopped doing that because it was stressing me out.
Things I made or did
- TTRPG Charts for Incubation, Initiatory Visions, or Prophetic Dreams (to be edited, renamed, perhaps reposted elsewhere; or maybe never touched again)
- I made a salve on August 1st; the carrier oils (olive and jojoba) are infused with English thyme (T. vulgaris), 'Flashback' calendula (C. officinalis), common mugwort (A. vulgaris), yomogi (A. princeps), and comfrey (S. officinale), all either grown on my balcony or harvested from plants I left in Idaho.
- I made a new collage on the 1st! This only took a few hours from initial idea to finish, no procrastinating at all.
- I came across this recipe for Banana Paletas a few years ago and I keep it in mind as a basic popsicle. I make them with coconut milk or a mix of coconut milk and yogurt, overripe bananas, vanilla, and no sugar. This time I also threw in some mango.
Older things I wanted to share
- Shkapang and Super Radical Solitaire: Two games by the same designer that I've been using to waste time on my phone — excellent when left on a gurney in a doctor's waiting room for an hour. The former is like a cross between pong, space invaders, and touhou; the latter is a solitaire game that lets you play minigames to swap out hidden cards when you get stuck, and it's also the only solitaire care game I've tried on Ubuntu Linux that I've also liked.
- “The Thing-of-the-Month Clubs” by John Brunner is a funny little story written as a magazine review of various thing-of-the-month clubs from a sci-fi future. I remembered it because I'm currently trying out my first-ever subscription box.
- My partner and I continue to pick away at Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, and I cannot recommend it enough if you like visual novels, Japanese media, horror, and stories about friends. I am so sucked in; we just started the Minagoroshi arc. Start now if you want summer vibes and cicada sound effects.
New-to-me things
- Worry Herbs: A cute little game that involves writing self-care/reflection prompts on a deck of cards and drawing one every time you water the plant. You win if you finish the deck before the plant dies.
- The current candle in my drippy wax bottle is Sun Goddess Sekhmet from Solis Illuminatum. It's orange beeswax and is scented with orange, clove, and cinnamon.
- I've filled my phone with files from Standard Ebooks. They have a lot of popular/widely-read books that are in the public domain, as well as some interesting looking older works by women and authors of color that I've downloaded to check out. While browsing their catalogue I had a little bit of the “wow I've never heard of this!” feeling that I love about used book stores.
- StackEdit is a nice and easy-to-use in-browser markdown editor. You can see what you're typing and how it looks side-by-side.
- I started watching The Expanse on the recommendation of a relative and it's very cool! Sci-fi with a lot of flavor — the spacers have an interesting pidgin. I have no idea what the show is trying to say politically but it's fun to watch.
- “September Moonrise” by Childe Hassam is supposedly a painting of, you know, the moonrise, but the colors give it a “beautiful summer in a smoky-skied western US hellscape” vibe:
