Today’s otter was captured by rospix in Wales (check out the rest of the pictures!), and comes via the BBC Wales Nature blog.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a great book? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: fun & hobbies
Otterday! And Open Thread 
100 books by women in 2016 
Link OTD: DIY Feminist Cybersecurity 
Hoyden About Town 
I am hangin’ out in ye olde sydney town this weekend, before heading off to Melbourne on Monday afternoon. After two and a half years in Canberra, I seem to have become unaccustomed to humidity. Seriously, I am about to start swimming in a pool of sweat. D:
It really is very humid today, isn’t it? I’m not enjoying it either.
Ah – waking up with one of those ‘my head is in a vice’ headaches – great start to the weekend, particularly when my major task of the day is ‘READ MORE LAW’. 😦 Never mind. And humid outside you say? What a joyous bonus!
Hi Jennifer! Would love to spontaneously say ‘let’s catch up’ but I’m afraid I’ve got chapters of international law to push through – hope you find somewhere fun and non-humid to hang out.
It’s been a bad summer for sleeping in that regard. Last night’s rain brought the February humidity back.
Two interesting media stories last night:
LNL had a fascinating interview with Rhonda Galbally, a feminist and disability activist from way back.
Stateline Victoria had a spiffy story on some guy who’s going to pretend to be homeless for a month. They basically interviewed a whole lot of real homeless people and support workers who said that it would be nothing like the real thing and explaining how homelessness really works.
Last night’s rain brought the February humidity back.
Oh, don’t brag to those of us in Adelaide about your rain. We’ve had just 16mm so far this year.
Deborah, argh, how quickly my training disappears. My parents live west of the Blue Mountains and until Christmas Day last year, I had lots of training in “don’t mention Sydney’s rainfall, don’t mention Sydney’s rainfall…”
I’d certainly choose it over drought.
‘though I’m now recalling that feeding a baby in hot sticky weather is not very much fun.
ETA: And right at this very moment, water is falling out of the sky at my place. My eldest says it’s because she and friend did a rain dance yesterday.
Heh, just read a great snark in a Guardian comments thread that I plan to file away for future use:
Our younger daughters have gone to a birthday party sleepover, so Ms Eleven and I are watching The Lord of the Rings. All of it. The extended version. (We’re on a between movie break right now.) She has read the book several times, and watched the movie with us once before, so this is second time round, and we are having a lovely time. And yes, because we are Kiwis, we do know people who are in the movies, notably our husband / father, who is an extra in the last battle before the gates of Mordor.
@ Deborah, that is so cool!
Does anyone know of an easy way to download last week’s episode of Big Love that I missed?
@Deborah *lets out squeak of LOTR geek glee* Now that’s a claim to fame worth making 🙂
This is one for the WTF files.
This one too The “product reviews” are mainly supposed to be in jest, but beware of fail. There are two which I think are real, and do make good points.
A feminist blog that regularly features otters? That is based relatively close to home? And did I mention features otters? Yeah, this will be going on my RSS reader right away. As far as I’m concerned, every day is otterday.
I started replying to the IWD post, and the realised this is just a blather. So I’m blathering over here instead. I’m feeling … pretty depressed, yeah. I’m thinking about how much more frightening the world is today, compared to when I hadn’t woken up to the patriarchy. How much more exhausting it is, and yet how much better I like myself now I’m not hating being female.
I went looking to see what universities offer gender studies courses today, and felt a bit excited, and then a bit intimidated wondering how I’d manage to go back to school and still support myself …
One of my posts got linked on stumleupon over the weekend, and my traffic has gone through the roof, with attendant trolls and condensation. Even the supportive visitors seem to think that rape culture is this backward Australian problem that their progressive countries have totally got a handle on. Riiiight.
Looking at my referrer logs, FP, you might have copped some of that overflow. Sorry if they’re not behaving. Apparently your blog name intrigues people.
**trigger warning**
I’m kind of new to brushing off the trolls. One posted a rape “joke” he found funny, therefore my post is wrong. Then he opined that if I’ve been raped, I shouldn’t leave the house without a man. WTF kind of logic is that, asshole? Sigh. Sorry, Hoydenizens, had to let that out somewhere.
So. I’m feeling depressed. But pleased to know all of the feminist community people that I do now.
Lutramania: I really like your pelican shot.
Jet: Ugh, I’m sorry about the misogynistic trollage. It shouldn’t be par for the course… but, sadly, it is.
Dept. of Un-Fucking-Believable:
As you know I don’t have any ads on my blog. Obvs people are not falling over themselves to offer same.
On IWD I clicked on Margaret Simon’s blog and saw an animated gif linking to an ACTU Rights at Work campaign page. The graphic isn’t there today but it’s a montage with Tony Abbott Will Bring Back Workchoices.
Anyhoo as a faithful union member I respectfully email the campaign people to ask if I can use the gif as part of my IWD post, linking to the same page of course. In effect AN AD HOSTED FOR NIX.
And what do they do, they REFUSE. For ”copyright reasons”.
Yeah, you wouldn’t want people to, you know, see it. And maybe join a union or something.
The world’s gone mad I tell you.
But Helen, surely you know that bloggers are infra dig! How could they possibly sully their copyright material thus?
Seriously, perhaps the gif was created by a member who gave them permission to use it but didn’t relinquish hir copyright to them. But I wonder if, were that the case, they even bothered to ask the artist whether it would be OK?
For, well, everyone who’s interested but especially for lutramania, I give you The Daily Otter, on Tumblr.
.-= kaninchenzero´s last blog ..The More It Hurts the More Sense It Makes =-.
I was reading something else in the NYT, and the review for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to the Phantom caught my eye. Ouch.
Here’s a photo of an eastern water dragon I was lucky enough to get at the park.
Oh wow, great shot Mary! I often see water dragons in the car park at work but haven’t managed to get close enough to get any really good photos. Lizards make me happy 🙂
mimbles, that’s at Lisgar Gardens in Hornsby, where that one seems to have a permanent home. We also saw a smaller one (juvenile? different sex? I don’t know much about them) about, they were out getting as much sun as there was to have that day, which wasn’t an enormous amount.