highlyeccentric

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.0.8 – 14 February 2026 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.0.8.

This release is all about warnings updates. There’s no new infrastructure here but there are some closure/construction updates, the most important being temporary closure of Burke-Gilman in Kenmore, with a detour onto a car street between 61st Ave NE and 65th Ave NE. Pedestrians have to go up to Bothell Way.

Here’s the complete changes list:

WARNING: Burke-Gilman CLOSURE in Kenmore for emergency repairs. They aren’t saying what, but it’s almost certainly hillside stabilisation where they piled up highway legos a few months ago. Between 61st and 65th Aves NE, February 16-20. (Both maps)
WARNING: I should’ve added this already, but I’ve now added caution flags on 125th NE in Seattle showing the rework in progress through November 2026. This is a massive project and will be a massive upgrade. (Both maps)
WARNING: Kirkland’s sewer line repair work still hasn’t let the southern Central Kirkland Connector reopen, and the latest word is end of February. Notice updated to reflect that. (MEGAMAP only)
REMOVED WARNING: EastRail Trail South temporary closure in Renton is over, so the warning has been removed. (MEGAMAP only)
REMOVED WARNING: Final work on the extended bike lanes of NE 124th in Kirkland wrapped up, so that warning has been removed. (Both maps)

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get bonus map variants, like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and this month I’m throwing them an all-cautions-removed 0% compression version of the MEGAMAP to see whether people like that. Plus, I can be open to requests.

Regardless – enjoy biking!

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

ysabetwordsmith

Low-Earth orbit is just 2.8 days from disaster

Low-Earth orbit is more crowded—and fragile—than it looks. Satellites constantly weave past each other, burning fuel and making dozens of evasive maneuvers every year just to stay safe. A major solar storm could disable navigation and communications, turning that careful dance into chaos. According to new calculations, it may take just days—not decades—for a catastrophic chain reaction to begin, potentially choking off humanity’s access to space for generations.

Solar storms can have various effects and follow an 11-year cycle. We are currently around the maximum, hence the aurora displays over the last year or two.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

The

crowdfunding Creative Jam is now open with a theme of "Not Giving Up." Come give us prompts, or claim some for your own inspiration!

What I Have Written:

From My Prompts:

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith posting in

crowdfunding

Welcome to the 151st Crowdfunding Creative Jam! This session will run Saturday, February 14-Sunday, February 15. The theme is "Not Giving Up."

Crowdfunding Creative Jam

Everyone is eligible to post prompts, which may be words or phrases, titles, images, etc. Prompters may request a specific creator, but everyone else may still use that prompt if they wish. Prompts may specify a particular character/world/etc. but creators may use the prompt for something else anyway and post the results. Prompters are still encouraged to post mostly prompts that anyone could use anywhere, as this maximizes the chance of having creators make something based on your prompt. Please title your comment "Prompt" or "Prompts" when providing inspiration so these are easy to find.

Prompt responses may also be treated as prompts and used for further inspiration. For example, a prompt may lead to a sketch which leads to a story, and so on. This kind of cascading inspiration is one of the most fun things about a collective jam session.

Everyone is eligible to use prompts, and everyone who wants to use a given prompt may do so, for maximum flexibility of creator choice in inspiration. You do not have to post a "Claim" reply when you decide to use a prompt, but this does help indicate what is going on so that other prompters can spread out their choice of prompts if they wish.

Creators are encouraged, but not required, to post at least one item free. Likewise, sharing a private copy of material with the prompter is encouraged but not required. Creative material resulting from prompts should be indicated in a reply to the prompt, with a link to the full content elsewhere on the creator's site (if desired); a brief excerpt and/or description of the material may be included in the reply (if desired). It helps to title your comment "Prompt Filled" or something like that so these are easy to identify. There is no time limit on responding to prompts. However, creators are encouraged to post replies sooner rather than later, as the attention of prompters will be highest during and shortly after the session.

Some items created from prompts may become available for sponsorship. Some creators may offer perks for donations, linkbacks, or other activity relating to this project. Check creator comments and links for their respective offerings.

Prompters, creators, and bystanders are expected to behave in a responsible and civil manner. If the moderators have to drag someone out of the sandbox for improper behavior, we will not be amused. Please respect other people's territory and intellectual property rights, and only play with someone else's characters/setting/etc. if you have permission. (Fanfic/fanart freebies are okay.) If you want to invite folks to play with something of yours, title the comment something like "Open Playground" so it's easy to spot. This can be a good way to attract new people to a shared world or open-source project, or just have some good non-canon fun.

Boost the signal! The more people who participate, the more fun this will be. Hopefully we'll see activity from a lot of folks who regularly mention their projects in this community, but new people are always welcome. You can link to this session post or to individual items created from prompts, whatever you think is awesome enough to recommend to your friends.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

Why have many societies begun to place such a high value on emotions and being emotional?

Everyone has feelings. Feelings can be intense. That makes it a good way to distract people from actions.

Current Mood: busy

candyheartsex

We have two pinch hits that will come in tomorrow afternoon, but it looks like we're still on track to open on time at 8:00 PM EST on 2/14!

Here's a countdown.

There is one remaining pinch hit! It does not need to be filled for the collection to open, so it will not delay reveals, but if you can create a gift for it, please let me know in the comments (they will be screened) or by emailing me at candyheartsex at gmail dot com. Make sure to include your AO3 name.

In the meantime, consider checking out the treatless spreadsheet! The collection will remain opening for treating throughout the anon period.

( PH 81 - The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner )

ysabetwordsmith

Today I picked out what I wanted from Pinetree Garden Seeds.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

cmk418 posting in

halfamoon

Title: Return to Westeros
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Character: Arya Stark (with Bran Stark, Brienne of Tarth, Yara Greyjoy, Sansa Stark, and Jon Snow)
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 330
Summary: Arya takes a break from her West of Westeros excursion to return home
A/N: I had the hardest time picking a character for this prompt and then I remembered Arya's "What's West of Westeros?" line and this fell into place from there.

( Return to Westeros )

torachan

1. We met our deadline for the big project, so it can move ahead on schedule! For the last couple weeks we've been pretty sure it was going to be okay (and this last week there was really no worry at all), but it was a major stressor since I joined the project last summer, and we did not make the original deadline at the end of the year so this extension was our final final deadline. It's a huge relief to have turned that in to the developers and be able to report to upper management that everything's going well.

2. This morning I was almost home from my walk when I saw a text from Carla saying she was going to get a breakfast burrito. The restaurant is not on my way, but only about a five minute walk from where I was, so I met up with her there and we split a burrito for breakfast.

3. I was looking around to see what all is near the new store when I go to help out next week and saw there's a Shake Shack in the same mall, which reminded me that we wanted to go to Shake Shack and try more of the Korean menu, so we went there tonight. It's a little longer walk than Carla was up for, so we drove, but then after dinner walked around, down to the beach and then through the Promenade.

Everything at Shake Shack was delicious. In addition to the chicken sandwich, which I'd had before, we got the spicy fries with cheese sauce. I'd had them without the cheese before and they were good, but even better with cheese. I also got the gochujang caramel shake, which was also very tasty.

We used to go down to the Promenade all the time years ago, but then just stopped, and now hardly ever go down there, and when we do it's usually just to the first block, where the Apple Store is. This time we did go to the Apple Store but also the other two blocks we don't usually check out, and I had totally forgotten there's a Barnes and Noble there again! There was a huge three story one there years ago, and then that closed (in 2018, apparently), but they opened a new smaller one about a year and a half ago. I had heard something about it, but it's not very relevant to me anymore, so I immediately forgot. We went in and checked it out, though, and it's really nice. Nowhere near as huge as the old one, but still big, and they have a second level in the basement where I bought a new puzzle.

We ended our walk with donuts from Sidecar, which is just about a block from Shake Shack. Brought the donuts home and will have them later. Overall it was a really nice night out and just the sort of thing that I want to do more of. Although there were several empty storefronts, overall the Promenade seemed pretty revitalized and there were a lot of people down there tonight. (It's one of those areas that has gone through multiple booms and busts. When I was really little, it was just called the mall, and then became the old mall when they built a new, indoor mall next to it, and it kind of died off. Then when I was a teenager it was revitalized as the Third Street Promenade, but started dying off again a while back, but seems to be having another revival now.)

4. It's the start of a three day weekend!

5. Molly!

ysabetwordsmith

Our theme this month was "Books and Literacy." I wrote from 1 PM to 12 AM, so about 1 hours, accounting for breaks. I wrote 1 poem on Tuesday plus 10 later in the week.

Participation was up, with 10 comments on LiveJournal and another 29 on Dreamwidth. A total of 15 people sent prompts. You have new prompters

gs_silva,

ionelv, and Laura G to thank for the second freebie.

Read Some Poetry!
The following poems from the February 3, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl have been posted:
"Books That Bite Back"
"The Evolution of Self-Publishing"
"Libraries from the Ashes"
"A Never Failing Spring"
"No Friend as Loyal"

"The Tranquility and Beauty of the Winter Landscape" (Polychrome Heroics: Rutledge, March 4, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl)

Buy some poetry!
If you plan to sponsor some poetry but haven't made up your mind yet, see the unsold poetry list from February 3. That includes the title, length, price, and the original thumbnail description for the poems still available.

This month's donors include:

janetmiles,

fuzzyred, and Anthony Barrette. All sponsored poems from this fishbowl have been posted. There are 3 tallies toward a bonus fishbowl.

The Poetry Fishbowl has a landing page.

Current Mood: busy

alchemicink posting in

halfamoon

After much waffling, I decided to pick a character whose "ruler" role isn't metaphorical. In the epilogue to this series, Kudelia finally ends up with real political power to make change on her world. Like many of the other characters I chose to write about this year, I love her determination 😊

Title: The fight goes on
Fandom: Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans
Character: Kudelia Aina Bernstein
Rating: G
Length: 150 words
Summary: Kudelia sits at her desk with the weight of a new title on her shoulders
Link: here on ao3 or you can read it under the cut below

( Read more... )

ysabetwordsmith

The following poems from the February 3, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl are currently available. Poems may be sponsored via PayPal -- there's a permanent donation button on my Dreamwidth profile page -- or you can write to me and discuss other methods. There are still verses left in the linkback poems "Delight in Another," "A Sense of Weather Changes," "Ouroboros Insects," "The Loving Embrace of Night," "Generations of Cooks Past," "Homefree and Clear, " "One Bite at a Time," "Stars and Diamonds," "Mishpocha," "Changing Your Nature," and "Besa."

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3207/

'The zero line in WMM2025 passes through a lot of population centers; I wonder what year the largest share of the population lived in a zone of less than 5° of declination,' he thought, derailing all other tasks for the rest of the day.

https://xkcd.com/3207/

rocky41_7 posting in

books

Earlier this week I finished another commute audiobook, Looking for Smoke by K.A. Cobell. This is a crime thriller/murder mystery that takes place on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. When a teenage girl is found strangled at the Indian Days summer powwow, four of her classmates become the prime suspects in her murder.

I would say this is a solid entry in the murder mystery genre. The book alternates perspectives between the four classmates, which allows the author to do some fun things keeping the reader on the hook. One character will make a big discovery only for the POV to pop over to another who doesn't have that information, so Cobell can keep information from the reader without it feeling too forced. The audiobook has a separate narrator for each POV, which was also fun (although I didn't care for Eli's reader) and if you're prone to picking up and putting down your audiobook in the middle of a chapter, this helps you keep track of whose POV you're in.

Cobell uses the format of the crime thriller, like Marcie Rendon in Where They Last Saw Her, to draw attention to the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), but the book still feels like a novel its own right; it never feels like just a tool for explaining the MMIW issue. And it's an important issue that deserves a lot more attention. The statistics on violence against Native American women are shocking--even if you think they're bad, they're probably worse than you're imagining--and specific stats get highlighted in the text and in the author's note at the end. In this way, I think the book has enormous social value. Cobell uses her characters to personalize the problem and show the comorbid impacts of poverty and drug use on the reservation.

Outside of its interest in the MMIW crisis, I don't think the book does much that's particularly groundbreaking. The teens band together to try to solve the mystery and absolve themselves, as you'd expect. At various times they suspect each other, family members, law enforcement. Cobell keeps you on the hook while offering reasonable suspicion for a number of characters. She avoids my least favorite move in the murder mystery genre, which is pinning it on some rando at the last minute.

The ending is pretty explosive and I enjoy some of the things she does with perspective here as well. We the readers know what the killer thinks of their crimes because the text tells us. But the other characters never hear that explanation except third hand, and many of them simply don't believe it. And that feels real--they end the story with their own version of the truth and there's simply no space for that to be corrected (and why would they believe the word of a killer anyway?) The killer feels a little one-dimensional, but the motives make sense, if they're unsurprising. The motivations behind most violent crimes are pretty repetitive.

The prose is fine. We're reading from the perspective of teenagers, so expect a lot of melodramatic metaphors and jumping to conclusions based on minimal evidence.

Overall, this book tells an important story. It was entertaining as a narrative and sheds light on a community that deserves a lot more attention.

ysabetwordsmith

A dinkus is a row of symbols, often asterisks, used as a section break in text.

Current Mood: busy

case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #6979 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01. https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/e001afdc9ddf.png
[OP warned for mild NSFW]

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #996.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

jesse_the_k

HGModernism, aka Hendry, offers a soothing yet informative 30 minutes on the theme

I found even rarer bird facts

( or stream it here )

Hendry shows illustrations and video of the birds under discussion, sitting in a well-appointed room with fascinating wallpaper, all while holding a tea cup that's as big as a plant pot. They appear to have four white devil horns thanks to the impressive antler mounted behind Hendry’s head.

Hendry is clearly a firm believer in factual content: corrections appear in the first comment; citations are in the description as well as all the links in a Github Gist. They have 28 other YT videos on divers topics plus more on Patreon.

Access

Accurate captions, except from 9:20 to 10:23, where Hendry sped up audio to get full value after splashing out $10 for the research paper defining the correct Latin gender nomenclature — Strigops habroptilus — NZ kākāpō.
The first link here and the listed video on YouTube go to the version where there’s an operatic music bed during the research paper recitation. My “stream here” is the no-music edition Hendry provides for “for my fellow auditory processing disorder strugglers”
No image descriptions
No flashing lights but lots of picture-in-picture video of birds.

via “We’re Here,” John & Hank Green’s good-news-and-links for Nerdfighteria every Friday

erinptah

I know there’s not a ton of people left who actively care about this fandom. But of the ones who do, I’m guessing at least a few of you still follow my blog(s).

So here’s a quick writeup! Let’s find out if anyone has feedback.

For people who weren’t in this fandom (or have forgotten the details by now), I’ll start with some backstory.

( A little unwieldy, a little awkward. It kinda counted on taggers having pre-existing knowledge of “which terms the LiveJournal-based fandom uses in which specific ways.” But for a long time, it worked! )

vivdunstan

Martin had a very brief lunchtime visit on Friday to Broughty Ferry harbour, after he’d dropped off loads of books for me to Broughty Ferry Oxfams. It was the first beautifully sunlit day for many weeks, so he took his big camera and got some great photos of birds. He’s uploaded loads to his Flickr account, but here is one I liked the most.

Two common gulls seen in black silhouette swimming to the right, one behind the other, in a silvery calm river with sunlight glistening around them.

Two common gulls seen in black silhouette swimming to the right, one behind the other, in a silvery calm river with sunlight glistening around them.

summersgate

So Sorry Skye. She's still with us but I think tomorrow will be the day. This is so hard. Dave is signed up to go to a fishing tournament tomorrow. I said that's okay, go ahead. Jules will go with me. Skye was Jules' cat before she was ours.

*****
We had lunch with Chloe today at Heaven's Baked Goods. It's always good to see her. I gave her the blue bunny I had made for her and she liked it.

The sparkles in the snow this afternoon from the kitchen window.

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highlyeccentric

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Page Summary

solarbird - Maps Release: Greater Northshore Bike Connector, MEGAMAP 2.0.8
ysabetwordsmith - Space Exploration
ysabetwordsmith - Creative Jam
ysabetwordsmith in crowdfunding - Creative Jam
ysabetwordsmith - Philosophical Questions: Emotions
candyheartsex - Remaining Pinch Hit + Countdown Timer
ysabetwordsmith - Pinetree Garden Seeds Order
cmk418 in halfamoon - Day 11 - Fic - Game of Thrones - Arya Stark
torachan - Daily Happiness
ysabetwordsmith - Poetry Fishbowl Report for February 3, 2026
alchemicink in halfamoon - Day 13: Fic - Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans - Kudelia
ysabetwordsmith - Unsold Poems for the February 3, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl
xkcd_feed - Bad Map Projection: Zero Declination
rocky41_7 in books - Recent Reading: Looking for Smoke
ysabetwordsmith - Vocabulary: Dinkus
case in fandomsecrets - [ SECRET POST #6979 ]
jesse_the_k - Amusing YouTube Video on Rare Bird Facts
erinptah - Looking at updating the Fake News/Pundit RPF fandom tags on AO3…
vivdunstan - The Silvery Tay
summersgate - friday

Style Credit

Style: Sea and Salt for Nouveau Oleanders by branchandroot
Resources: OpenClipart and Oceanside Twilight

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Page generated Feb. 14th, 2026 07:53 am

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Network

Maps Release: Greater Northshore Bike Connector, MEGAMAP 2.0.8

Space Exploration

Creative Jam

Creative Jam

Philosophical Questions: Emotions

Remaining Pinch Hit + Countdown Timer

Pinetree Garden Seeds Order

Day 11 - Fic - Game of Thrones - Arya Stark

Daily Happiness

Poetry Fishbowl Report for February 3, 2026

Day 13: Fic - Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans - Kudelia

Unsold Poems for the February 3, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl

Bad Map Projection: Zero Declination

Recent Reading: Looking for Smoke

Vocabulary: Dinkus

[ SECRET POST #6979 ]

Amusing YouTube Video on Rare Bird Facts

I found even rarer bird facts

Access

Looking at updating the Fake News/Pundit RPF fandom tags on AO3…

The Silvery Tay

friday

Profile

November 2025

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