"You Wouldn't Steal A Gender" and "I Would Definitely Steal A Gender" badges, in exactly the font you'd expect.

This month's Tasting Collective dinner was at Via Triozzi, which is on Lower Greenville. I liked the idea of the menu but the execution was disappointing.

The first course was a celery and fennel root salad, which would have been better if there had been more of the sweet gorgonzola with it. Second course was a fancy mussels in sauce with spicy chickpeas, which I thought was the best thing on the menu (and the only item from the regular menu). The third courts was a mushroom pasta. The pasta was fine; the mushrooms were amazing. The fourth course was a roasted chicken ravioli. We thought it was a little weird because there was chicken outside the ravioli, and little bits of crispy chicken skin. Not bad, just a little strange. Apparently it was based on a comfort meal for one of the chefs. The dessert was olive oil cake with whipped cream and macerated berries, and it was fine but the olive oil cake was dry, which ... I'm not sure how you do that.

Like the Goldie's trip we did a while ago (which I failed to write up at the time), this was mostly a tasting menu of new ideas, and not yet refined by the chef into menu quality. Based on the bar, the service, and the one dish from the regular menu, I'd try it again, but not with the enthusiasm that I tried Rye.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/04/protests-erupt-across-the-uk-after-supreme-court-ruled-against-trans-rights/

Many many pictures.

Also, more protests yet to come, apparently, with ones scheduled for Oxford and Cambridge.

Rebellion is growing among Labour MPs, so if you have a Labour MP, now is a VERY good and important time to write to them to protest the proposed PIP and other cuts:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/20/the-whole-policy-is-wrong-rebellion-among-labour-mps-grows-over-5bn-benefits-cut

(If you have a non-Labour MP, hassle them too and see if they can be persuaded to do something vaguely useful.)

Hey folks!

Still alive, still employed! Booyah.

Not loving the job right now: it's never boring, but I had never intended to be a manager of people, and it's really quite stressful. Plus, you know, ::waves vaguely:: the omnishambles of everything is not helping.

But I did take the Tornado out for a 7-mile hike this morning, and she behaved quite well, and we just did some agility practice, and she got six weave poles in a row! Five times! So great. (If you have never seen dog agility, it looks like this, although that's one of the top dogs in the UK, and the Tornado is just beginning her agility journey.)

I call her the Tornado because she is Very. High. Energy. (And tends to knock things over.) I fear she will be one of the dogs barking all the way through the agility course.

Anyway, I'm planning some vacation time this summer, although it feels a little weird to be planning an international trip at this time. I plan to do some judicious app-deletion before coming back through Customs, because that's the world we live in right now.

Currently very excited about both Andor and Murderbot! I've already gotten a tiny bit spoiled for Andor, so I think I will have to lock down my browsing for the next few days. I understand the next Star Wars animated show (after Underworld) is also going to be about Darth Maul, and I'm kind of dubious, but maybe they can do something interesting with it. Myself, I would rather have learned more about Omega's adventures in the Rebellion.

I'm halfway through this month's book for book club, but it's heavy going: Therese Raquin, by Zola. I have liked Zola: he's very grounded, very vivid. Not at all romantic. But these characters are really very unlikeable. I may end up skimming a lot to finish by Tuesday.

***

I feel like I'm running out of plotty time-travel fixit fics in which determined heroes (and heroines) go back in time and prevent the errors of their forebearers. I suspect I have not found the right tags on AO3...

In other news, I am listening to Mind the Tags, a charming podcast about fandom, specifically fic-writing fandom. And although the hosts are quite nice, they're so young, and I found myself talking back to them as they fumbled their way through a discussion of the early days of alt.tv.x-files.creative. They tried to talk about show-specific archives and auto-archiving and never even mentioned Ephemeral and Gossamer! There are plenty of us fandom Olds still around!

(Although, how cool is it that Gossamer is still up? WTF.)

Still, it's a very friendly and upbeat podcast full of enthusiasm for fandom and fannish institutions, so I encourage y'all to give it a try if that's the sort of thing you enjoy. I found them because one of the hosts got interviewed by Anne Helen Peterson on her Culture Study podcast, which is also great.

In other other news, I lined up a group of local pals to go see our local minor league baseball team next month! So that will be fun! I like minor-league baseball because it's cheap and low-stakes and you can sit outside and drink beer and eat corn dogs and it doesn't really matter except you're there with a crowd and it's just fun. And all the seats are good.

As I work trying to keep Roy's weight up and to get him hydrated so the random peeing outside the box stops, I finally decided to give in and put boxes where he usually does this instead of just putting down mats and reusable pee pads. Rather weary of cleaning up puddles. Because I have a cat poo munching pooch, I also decided to spring for cat boxes that are hidden in furniture. I know they won't keep him out as he's the size OF a cat, but placement... I thought placement would have prevented snackage. The box in the living room is in a corner, slid in next to a bigger freestanding electric fireplace. I left what I thought was a narrow enough gap between the pieces and crossed my fingers.

Last night, as I was busy putting together the second furniture piece I wandered back into the living room to find Walter shimmying out from inside the box, licking his chops. ARRRRRRRRGH. I did suspect, as there was a teeny trace of poo the night before and none of my cats do anything but go all in with pooping. LOL. I scolded him but good and bopped him on the nose (which I regret), and then brushed his teeth vigorously (which I do not regret).

I moved it and now there's a 4 inch gap. Little turkey will probably still make a go at it.

Also, same said turkey just coughed in my face and a chunk of popcorn flew out of his gaping maw and splattered onto my nose. DOGS ARE SO GROSS WHYYYYYYYY.

https://youtube.com/shorts/y1CoZ2U3SMo?si=yuNXVeDzhFiaaYVx

Round-up thread from What The Trans?!:

https://bsky.app/profile/whatthetrans.com/post/3lmwvjkupl22c

Fuck TERF Island, and fuck Rowling gloating over how she bought this. Solidarity forever.

ETA: if anyone wants to rage-donate, off the top of my head here are some ideas:

https://transsafety.network/
https://transkidsdeservebetter.org/
https://transaid.cymru/
https://genderedintelligence.co.uk/
https://www.gofundme.com/f/london-trans-pride-2025
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/
https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/
https://lgbtiqoutside.org/

Books
In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space, by Irvin Weathersby Jr. Powerful art history memoir in which the author, a Black man, confronts white supremacy in public art: both in monuments to former Confederates and to the emerging Black-included historical monuments that have been replacing them.

Music
Julia Bullock & Christian Reif: Tiny Desk Concert. Her material choice was OK, but her voice is AMAZING.
Apple Music: Garbage Essentials. I keep forgetting there are a couple of albums of theirs I missed, as well as the new one that's coming out in a few weeks. I love the older stuff, and I'm learning to love the new stuff.

Sketches of Spain has been on our list for a long time, so when our friend Ian suggested it for dinner tonight while Michael was out of town, I gladly said yes. We had tapas and ate ourselves stuffed. My favorite was the octopus and the close runner-up was the anchovies. The mushrooms were also very good and I even enjoyed the asparagus. Michael and I will have to check it out when he's back.

Afterwards Ian and I also went to Emporium Pies for dessert. It's about a quarter-mile away; I hadn't realized Sketches of Spain was so close to our old, much-missed favorite Boulevardier. I had the blueberry and Ian had the apple. I think we could have switched and been equally happy. Yum.

Sadly I had to come home to work on game stuff or we'd've had a stop at Wild Detectives as well. It was on the block between the two restaurants. Ian was saying he'd nearly moved into this neighborhood and was wondering what his life would have been like if he'd done that. We'd eat down in Bishop Arts more often, that's for sure.

https://magebird.tumblr.com/post/780824786697945089/hello-my-name-is-and-i-am-a-constituent
https://thisfinecrew.dreamwidth.org/305758.html

N.B. The Trump administration is now blatantly defying the Supreme Court, pretending that being ordered to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's return doesn't mean "bring him back".

As Justice Sotomayor noted, the Trump admin's argument in the case would mean that they "could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Kilmar_Abrego_Garcia

This is time to start screaming in whatever way you can.