regshoe | Network

Health

Crossing fingers and toes that I keep out of early spring cold season. So far, so good. I haven’t taken off my winter gear yet even if it’s very tempting to do so. It’s still 3 C outside. The little voice inside my head is saying… above 0 C, the temperature is above 0 C. In French we say : En Avril ne te découvre pas d’un fil mais en mai…. Fais ce que tu veux.

Teaching stuff

The Book club conference went really well on Monday, the students were happy, the lecturer was great. Things came out nice. My content for next week is off to my beta reader. Only two weeks left. The next class is on reading challenges and I wrote about that last year on my blog. Half of the content is already done. I might decide to write it this week-end.

Reading

I am doing a read along on Discord in a French Book club Jeannot book club. We are reading Katabasis by R. F. Kuang. So far and I have only 6% read it’s okay.

I’m also half way through book 2 of Sara Lövestam series. Ça ne coüte rien de demander It’s quite good. Short chapters, ambiguous characters.

I got a bunch of new books this week. One of them is Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula. An Fantasy AU of Mary Anning’s life. I loved Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures so when I read about Geomagician at Bookriot, I ordered it.

Watching

I’m slowly making my way through Pursuit of Jade 13/40 Zhang Ling He is quite a sight. I am looking forward to Rebirth coming next week with Li Yun Rui (Song Mo from Blossom) although I have not seen any of the Princess Agent previous dramas.

Hockey

My penguins came out of March alive. Thanks to Erik Karlsson, EK65 took the team on his back (both Sid and Geno were out multiple games) and took charge. I wasn’t surprise, he was the Senator’s captain after all. Now, Sid and Geno are both back and we are, crossing fingers, making the playoffs.

Crafting

My red fox is coming along the blue and black winter forest is almost done. Only the rest of the tail after that.

languagehat_feed

Posted by languagehat

https://languagehat.com/kojeve-and-koyre/

https://languagehat.com/?p=19474

I find Jonathan Rée’s LRB review (5 February 2026; archived) of two books on Alexandre Kojève interesting on a number of counts. For one thing, he had the unusual duality of being both a well-known philosopher (Hegelian variety) and an important figure in French governments (Rée’s piece begins “The obituary in Le Monde was unequivocal: the death of Alexandre Kojève on 4 June 1968 had deprived France of one of its greatest civil servants”). Of more Hattic relevance is his name; he was born Aleksandr Vladimirovich Kozhevnikov (in Moscow), but at some point (neither English nor French Wikipedia is clear about this) he adopted the snappier Gallicized version Kojève. Here is a piquant account of his adventures after leaving Russia:

After a hard journey, including a spell in a Polish prison, Kojève reached Berlin in July 1920 and a few months later came into possession of a large stash of diamonds, sent illicitly from Russia by his mother. He was just eighteen and found himself, as he recalled, ‘at the mercy of money and the pleasures of life’. His extravagances and indiscretions may have been extreme, but they did not stop him taking courses in Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese, and devouring, as he put it, ‘everything worth reading in philosophy’. He also registered at Heidelberg to pursue research on Vladimir Soloviev, whom he regarded as ‘the first Russian thinker to devise a universal philosophical system’. He commended Soloviev’s vision of an ‘end of history’ in which humanity would rally to the feminine figure of Sophia, or absolute wisdom, but criticised the irrational attachment to Christianity which, he said, prevented Soloviev from winning through to ‘a new stage in the evolution of thought’.

Kojève finished his dissertation in 1924 but didn’t stay in Heidelberg long enough to qualify for a degree. Berlin was far more exciting and before long he was involved with a glamorous Russian woman, Cécile Shoutak. She was already married, and her aggrieved husband persuaded his older brother, Aleksander Koyra, to remonstrate with Kojève. The scheme misfired, however: Koyra came away convinced that his sister-in-law was ‘absolutely right’ and that Kojève was ‘much, much better than my brother’. He then returned to his home in Paris and persuaded the scandalous couple to join him there in 1926. They married and lived in conspicuous luxury in the Latin Quarter, while Kojève took up an inquiry into determinism and modern physics. But the Crash of 1929 wiped out his investments, which put an end to his high living, his marriage and his work in natural science, though not to his friendship with Koyra.

Koyra was one of the most celebrated intellectuals of the Russian diaspora. He had studied philosophy in Germany and France before joining the Foreign Legion, fighting on the Eastern Front and taking French citizenship under the name Alexandre Koyré. He completed a state doctorate in 1922, at the age of thirty, and was appointed to the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he started trying to rehabilitate Hegel in France. The ‘traditional interpretation’, he said, was completely wrong: Hegel was not the ‘absurd dialectician and outrageous reactionary’ portrayed in patriotic French textbooks but a ‘singularly attractive’ thinker, more interested in ‘experience’ than ‘method’. Early in 1933, Koyré gave lectures on ‘Hegel in Jena’ in which he evoked ‘a human Hegel, vibrant and vulnerable’. He admitted that Hegel’s notion of an ‘end of history’ looked preposterous, even self-contradictory: how could abstract philosophical reasoning adjudicate on questions of historical fact and how could there be a ‘future’ in which there is ‘no longer any future’? But the difficulties disappear, according to Koyré, once you realise that Hegel was talking not about history as such, but about the way philosophy reflects on it. ‘Philosophy always arrives too late,’ as Hegel once put it. ‘When philosophy paints its grey on grey, a form of life has grown old,’ or in other words, the ‘owl of Minerva’ – symbol of philosophical insight – ‘takes flight only at dusk’. The notion of an end of history is therefore hypothetical rather than categorical: it means that philosophy will not be complete until history is finished, or conversely, that if philosophy is complete, then history must be over. Koyré seems to have thought that no one in their right mind could imagine that these conditions would ever be fulfilled; but he conceded rather sorrowfully that, in Jena in 1806, ‘Hegel himself may well have believed it.’

So there’s another odd onomastic change: why did Koyra (Койра) choose to become Koyré ([kwaʁe])? Is this what studying Hegel does to people? (Kojève’s innamorata Cécile Shoutak also has an odd name — Russian sources call her Цецилия Леонидовна Шутак, and what kind of Russian name is Цецилия?) Anyway, the whole review is worth reading if you care about this stuff, and I’ll quote another Hattic bit: Kojève “took some pride in having defied taboo by encouraging smoking and using colloquial French.”

https://languagehat.com/kojeve-and-koyre/

https://languagehat.com/?p=19474

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3227/

This xkcd.com update introduces a variety of new reading modes which can be activated through the menu below the comic.

https://xkcd.com/3227/

nanila

Watch on YouTube

Very much feeling as though I'm limping toward the finish line here. The University shuts down at CoB tomorrow for the Easter holiday. I'm running on fumes and caffeine, trying to clear my desk and inbox of things I really shouldn't leave until after it re-opens.

This month features the return of the canal boats*, two trips to London, and the inaugural ice creams from the Ninja Creami (thank you,

semianonymous!). Making your own soft serve ice cream from scratch truly is a luxury.

* We missed them last year. The entire lock flight had to be shut for months so the Canal and Rivers Trust could carry out extensive repairs to a lock with collapsed walls.

wonkette_feed

Posted by Robyn Pennacchia

https://www.wonkette.com/p/jillian-michaels-dave-rubin-just

Dave Rubin wants you to know that, despite what you may think of him, he has actual friends. That, I assume, is why he named his podcast “Actual Friends.” So you’re aware. That he has actual friends.

Last week, Rubin and his actual friends (he will have you know) Jillian Michaels and Dr. Drew — hosts of two of the most evil reality shows to have ever existed, The Biggest Loser and Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew, respectively — began the podcast with a little chat about Rubin’s recent excursion to CPAC Hungary, during which he got to hang out with Viktor Orbán, Javier Milei, and a host of other people you dirty libs would probably consider to be fascists, just because of … well, you know.

“You know I was in Hungary. Uh, they kept telling me I was hanging out with all these fascists. They seemed like quite lovely people and the food was great and it was safe,” explained Rubin. “I did not meet Marine Le Pen, but I did meet with Viktor Orbán, who they say is a big fascist. I met with Javier Milei, who they say is a mean guy. He's got a great smile.”

Did you hear that? He has a great smile! What’s a little very obvious government corruption and fraud when a fella has a nice smile like that? Now, for reasons of copyright, I can’t post a picture of Milei’s gorgeous smile, but I can post this clip from Wayne’s World 2, which I believe approximates it well enough.

Do a Google image search! I’m not wrong.

Dave Rubin loooooves Hungary, and Dr. Drew says he’s dying to visit, but is also far more concerned at the moment with the amount that he is thirsting after Marine Le Pen. He wants to talk about her, but all Rubin wants to talk about is how Hungary is just so great and so anti-immigrant and just has this sense of history, because they were taken over by the Nazis and the USSR, and thus “have this like sort of extra antenna when things are going a little awry.”

I suppose this is where I point out that Orbán has a near-absolute control of the media and has rigged the elections so he and his party (Fidesz) cannot lose, which is why he’s been president for the last 16 years despite never having had majority support in the country. Not to mention the many other human rights abuses there.

To be fair, many people are aware that something has gone “awry,” they just can’t do too much about it.

Anyway, Rubin then starts talking about how he also met with Alice Weidel, the leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party — who, he will have you know, is a lesbian. For Rubin, this means that, actually, the European far-Right is actually now totally pro-gay.

“She gets huge applause and she talks about that she traveled there with her wife and daughter.
“And what strange bedfellows this is all made, because now you have the right-wing Orbán with the right-wing leader of the German party. But they're now, in essence, they're pro-gay because it's because gay is now Western, which it should be. I mean that's one of the good things of the West. There's many good things in the West but you know it's hard, for you know it was, so it was just such a strange realignment of things and and a lot of goulash.”

Yeah, so the Hungarian government has literally banned Pride parades, has banned women in same-sex relationships from getting IVF, has banned same-sex couples from adopting, has practically banned transgender people from existing, and has made it so any film or television content featuring LGBTQ+ people or themes is heavily regulated. It’s basically illegal to tell children that LGBTQ+ people exist.

So pro-gay!

Rubin, in case you didn’t know, is gay and has two children through IVF and surrogacy with his husband. Michaels is also gay and had two children with her former partner (one adopted, one the partner had through IVF) and is currently married to another woman. They would not be allowed to do any of that in “pro-gay” Hungary.

Anyway, this got Jillian Michaels thinking. Thinking about Andrew Wilson, a Christian Nationalist frequent host of the red pill/manosphere podcast Whatever, and how he is like, a total genius who just doesn’t really think gay people should exist or that women should vote.

“I was speaking with Andrew Wilson, who to be fair is very nice and exceptionally intelligent and a fearsome debater. And I was like, ‘What do we do here? Because I I like you.’ And he legitimately was like, ‘Being gay is evil.’ And I was like, ‘God, this sucks that we're in such an awful impasse!’
“Yeah. And he he feels that way. And you know what? I respect that that is his religion. I have zero interest in trying to change his mind because it would just be insulting. You know, you could never do such a thing.”

Yes, changing his mind that being gay is evil really would be insulting. Dr. Drew then interjected that he thinks it would be so interesting to talk to him and find out “what’s underneath that.”

“It is religious. It is religious,” Michaels responded. “He's a Christian Nationalist. He says ‘I am a Christian Nationalist.’ And it's such a strange thing to —”

Dave Rubin was not having this and was quite agitated with the way things are going, because he really, really likes to pretend that there are absolutely no issues with homophobia on the Right, and that those who do oppose gay rights on the Right don’t actually want to hurt anyone and also couldn’t even if they wanted to, for reasons?

“Okay. So what does he want to do? Does he want to jail you, then? What does he want to do? I mean if you take this thing to its logical conclusion, what does he want?” Rubin asked.

Jillian:

“Long story short, he wants us to literally go back to the ‘80s where we're happy to not be killed. Um, and we can kind of do what we want behind closed doors. I'm verbatim. And he also feels that women shouldn't be voting because we don't get drafted. And I — by the way, Drew, he's exceptionally intelligent. Exceptionally intelligent.”

And again. Dr. Drew just really wants to talk to this “exceptionally intelligent” man to try to “get him into a rational territory.”

Jillian:

“You will not! You will not! And I think the more you try, the more offended I think someone like him would become. Whereas I just kind of listened because I was like okay tell me, you know, what is your worldview? How do you feel about this? And that is how he feels and I [asked] him, ‘Like, is there a world where we have some sort of an overlap? And some sort of alliance?’ And I honestly, I love his honesty and he's like, ‘Not really.’ He's like, ‘If you want to vote with me on something like I'll take your vote but there is no sort of quid pro quo there.’ They do not compromise on the way they see the world. It’s a deeply religious purview.”

No one has ever wanted to be friends with anyone as much as Jillian Michaels wants to be friends with this guy who thinks she’s evil and shouldn’t be able to vote. It’s just incredible how fabulously gracious she can be, so long as someone isn’t fat, an immigrant, transgender, or anywhere to the left of Viktor Orbán.

Still, all of this makes Jillian Michaels wonder if at, at some point, America is going to be forced to choose between Christian Nationalism and radical Islam, which does not seem to be a thing that is actually on the table. Rubin’s take is that the Christian Nationalists are actually the ones “ushering in radical Islam,” which also does not seem like a reality-based take. He thinks it’s going to come down to “Chrislam” vs. “Wokeism.”

Is he mad at Christian Nationalism now? Aren’t all of his friends Christian Nationalists? Given that he then brings up Tucker Carlson as an example, I suspect this could have something to do with Rubin’s pro-Israel stance … but there are also a lot of Christian Nationalists who are also very pro-Israel (most, I would assume!) so it’s not entirely clear. He might just be very stupid.

Either way, I guess it’s time for me to update my spreadsheet of internal right-wing beefs!

Donate Just Once!

I don’t know what “Chrislam” vs. “Wokeism” would entail — largely because “Wokeism” is something the Right made up and I am largely unaware of the particulars — but if he means that he and Jillian Michaels would have to choose between having rights, keeping their children, and like 10 transgender women playing college sports … it’s hard to imagine that it would be that difficult a decision for them.

Obviously, they’d give up their kids.

OPEN THREAD!

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https://www.wonkette.com/p/jillian-michaels-dave-rubin-just

sholio

1. My snowy spring icons are generally an accurate image of how spring is going around here, but this year perhaps more than most. It isn't even supposed to be above freezing today. By the end of the week we may finally start getting some 40-ish temperatures. The entire month of March has been absolutely frigid - many low temperature records were set - and we still have 3 feet of snow. SPRING WHEN???

2. I realized how much I miss fandom bingo cards when I discovered a new one at

whatif_au, which is taking requests for cards. (Full list of AUs at the link; you can veto up to 3, and you can request a 3x3 or 5x5 card. Note that you WILL have to join the comm to post a request.)

So anyway I requested a card.

Sentinel/Guide	Treasure Hunter	Holiday Mythology
Robot	WILD CARD	Decade Specific
People with Disabilities	Fake Relationship	Cowboy

Will I do anything with this? who knows. But it's fun to have a bingo card again! (Biggles cowboy AU immediately came to mind because it would be hilarious.)

3.

unconventionalcourtship is back for another round. You pick a Harlequin/Mills & Boon book blurb and write a fic based on it. I don't recall that I've ever officially done this, but it's always fun to see what people come up with. List of blurbs here and also a plot generator which allows you to put in character names. (I recall having fun with this in the past.)

I'm not sure that this is something I actually want to write, but I can't help thinking how much Londo & G'Kar would loathe being in a Harlequin/Mills & Boon plot, and no one around them would be having any fun at all, either.

james

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

trope_mod posting in

trope_of_the_month

The theme for April is Fake Dating. Circumstances cause characters to pretend to be a couple when they're not, but will real feelings develop?

Posting guidelines are here, and if you have any recs or prompts you'd like to share, you can leave them in the comments using the templates below:

For recs:

For prompts:

This theme will last until 30th April.

shipperslist

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

tally posting in

fandom_on_dw

rimworld is a new community for anything Rimworld! Any and all types of Rimworld posts are welcome—meta and discussion, colony sharing, recommendations for fic, art, and mods, etc.!

Membership is open and tags are set up and ready to go. And yesterday, I made a post on expectations and wishes for the next expansion!

Here also is a direct link to the community rules.

Come and join for +5 mood. ♥

Current Mood: busy

hannah

I still don't know how many people will be at the Seder tonight. I've got a rough idea of what's going to happen - there's only so far you can take a Seder - and I'm still trying to accept that it isn't my problem and if someone else takes on the headache, that's fine with me. I'm going to work to breathe through it.

Speaking of, I should get ready to go and set a good example to everyone else by being ready early.

Current Mood: blank
Current Music: nothing now

galadhir

End of term for Elizabeth's class and she let slip that next term she would be expecting us to write another solo.

One of the other ladies suggested to me that perhaps--as we both grew up being into Heavy Metal Rock--we could do a dance together to Khepri - Fangs of Apep

I could definitely put together an outfit for a heavy metal bellydance, with a black lace skirt and chains and a cropped band t-shirt. It would be nice to revisit my heavy rocker phase, and I do have the hair for it these days. It would also be really nice to dance with someone else. It's great just to be asked :)

But... just in case she is ill or changes her mind, I think I'm also going to work on a solo dance - if I don't use it then, I'll still use it later.

Today I was practicing Louise's veil choreography and my Fos solo for the hafla on the 11th, and you know I've been turning over the thought of using Ya Baba for something for a while now. Then this morning I woke up and looked at my sword and thought, "it would be nice to do another sword dance."

But I had been missing the thing that would bring everything together and give me the inspiration and excitement to actually start anything.

Well, it arrived today while practicing something else.

Obviously what I wanted was to do a sword dance inspired by the scene in the Fire Palace when Meng Yao is torturing Nie Mingjue for Wen Ruohan's entertainment.

Nie Mingjue is a clan leader who rescued Meng Yao from bullying soldiers and made him his favourite, but Meng Yao killed one of his men. Almost immediately afterward MY saved NMJ's life by taking a sword thrust that was meant for him.
So with streaming tears on both sides NMJ exiled Meng Yao, who went off to serve NMJ's enemy (and actually to spy for the good guys.) NMJ then got captured and MY had to torture him enough to make Wen Ruohan distracted, so that WRH would let his guard down and MY could stab him and win the war.
This succeeded in winning the war, but meant that MY and NMJ's relationship never recovered and they became bitter enemies, eventually killing each other and being buried in the same coffin.

I have a lot of problems with doing the whole sexy & playful part of belly dancing, but Meng Yao is going full ham in that scene, being the most homme fatale a spurned favourite could possibly be while dressed in immaculate robes and eyeliner, and fondling another man's sword.

This is absolutely ideal for a belly dance! I'm sure I can do scheming villainous homoeroticism with a sword!

I was like 'I bet that would work with Ya Baba.' But now I have come home and looked up the lyrics, and it turns out they could have been written for that scene:

The wound My beloved (Oh Father) is on two sides
And I swear by God (Oh Father)
I have never loved anyone but him
We are not being lifted up (We are not being lifted up)
And the fire is in my heart (And the fire is in my heart)
It burns my veins, it burns my veins

So yes. I'm going to do that one regardless, even if I do a fun heavy metal one first :)

themanemod posting in

pinchhits

Event: The Mane Event 2026
Event Link: https://the-mane-event.dreamwidth.org/
Pinch Hit Link: Current PHs Found Here
Due Date: April 6th by 11:59 PM UTC
Minimum: 500 words or fanart at the 'nice sketch' stage

The Mane Event is a hair-themed multifandom exchange and at least one requested freeform must be included in the gift.

PH 1 - ベイブレードバースト | Beyblade Burst (Anime), Metal Fight Beyblade | Beyblade Metal Saga, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's

PH 3 - 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF, 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018), 镇魂 | Guardian - priest

PH 4 - NoPixel (Web Series), Video Blogging RPF, Shirokuma Cafe | Polar Bear's Cafe

PH 5 - 阴阳师 | Yīn Yáng Shī | The Yin-yang Master (Movies - Guo Jingming), 陰陽師 | Onmyouji (Anime 2023), 밤에 피는 꽃 | Knight Flower (TV)

musesfool

April is National Poetry Month in the US, so as I have done for the last...TWENTY YEARS!!!! I will be posting a poem a day here (and a different poem on tumblr). They will be tagged as "poetry" and "national poetry month 2026," so if you know how to block tags on DW, have at it!

Let's start with old favorite Billy Collins:

Lines Lost Among Trees
by Billy Collins

These are not the lines that came to me
while walking in the woods
with no pen
and nothing to write on anyway.

They are gone forever,
a handful of coins
dropped through the grate of memory,
along with the ingenious mnemonic

I devised to hold them in place---
all gone and forgotten
before I had returned to the clearing of lawn
in back of our quiet house

with its jars jammed with pens,
its notebooks and reams of blank paper,
its desk and soft lamp,
its table and the light from its windows.

So this is my elegy for them,
those six or eight exhalations,
the braided rope of the syntax,
the jazz of the timing,

and the little insight at the end
wagging like the short tail
of a perfectly obedient spaniel
sitting by the door.

This is my envoy to nothing
where I say Go, little poem---
not out into the world of strangers' eyes,
but off to some airy limbo,

home to lost epics,
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,

which, like a fantastic city in pencil,
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.

***

Current Mood: better
Current Music: Mets vs Cardinals on tv

askamanager_feed

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2026/04/the-aggressive-applause-the-secret-meal-access-and-other-stories-from-event-workers.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=37067

Recently we heard from people who work at events — their horror stories and wins — and here are 10 of my favorite stories they shared.

1. The applause

I was part of a round of lightning talks. The event organizers told us we had five minutes apiece, and for enforcement they told the audience to applaud violators off the stage.

I was done in 90-odd seconds because I’m cool like that.

“Blowhard Bob” the CISO, however, adored the sound of his own voice and did not believe time limits applied to him. He was barely halfway through his slides when the applause started. He tried to talk over it, being Blowhard Bob, but the audience only raised the volume of clapping until he had no choice but to leave the stage.

I saw his thunderous face as he left the event venue. I never liked Blowhard Bob, so it was a petty treat to see him so uselessly offended.

2. The secret access

I’m a vegetarian in a company that frequently hosts customers or suppliers (on the order of 100+ per week) for all-day meetings, where they are very much trapped and unable to get their own food. A large number of our visitors are also vegetarian/vegan. I have the fortunate ability to bring my own food, but the visitors cannot.

There is almost never a veg option for our catered lunches. The options exist at every location we cater from, but the hosts never select one. I attempted for a year to get the hosts to start adding vegetarian options, but for unknown reasons this ask is impossible.

Finally, I appealed to my network admin friend to give me backdoor access to the catering request website. Each Monday, my Good Deed of the Week is to log in and edit every single new catering form to include a veg option. The hosts often make surprised noises at finding themselves with a tray of veg food (and take the credit when it comes in handy), but no one ever tries to figure out how it keeps happening. Going on 2 years now executing my petty act of good will.

3. The nature soundtrack

Each year, Big Corporation honored retiring 25-year employees with a fancy dinner and dancing at an expensive venue. The location chosen that year was an exclusive brand new hotel, and the company was excited to be able to show it and themselves off.

As the guests arrive to the lounge for drinks, oohing and ahhing about the luxurious appointments suddenly stops as the piped-in music becomes audible. Tradition held that the music chosen for the cocktail hour be top 40 hits from the year these folks started at the company, but the intern charged with assembling the playlist decided that because the big new hotel displaced a wetland, recorded sounds of a swamp including croaking frogs and chirping crickets filled the cocktail lounge. People were confused as they held crystal champagne flutes.

4. The medical simulation

One year, we invited a medical simulation team (similar to an emergency simulation, but for medical events) to present at the nursing conference I used to run. They did not tell us the simulation they would be running would involve copious fake blood – which got squirted in lots of different places, including the people sitting in the front row. I think the venue ended up charging us for carpet cleaning too.

5. The grape Kool Aid and the geese

At a corporate headquarters campus preparing for the July 4th outdoor concert and fireworks, that summer had been extremely dry, and special permission and pre-show requirements were needed for the fireworks display to happen to prevent grass fires.

Coincidentally, the campus ponds and fountains were attracting huge flocks of Canada geese because of the drought. Did you know that goose droppings are the size of small dog droppings? Before the hundreds of families came ready to spread their blankets to picnic on the lawns before the concert, vast quantities of goose doodoo had to be removed and said geese needed to be convinced not to return until July 5th . A two-pronged approach was to bring in border collies to scare off the fowl and then sprinkle huge quantities of grape flavored Kool Aid powder, because of course that would send the geese back to Canada (they hate one of the ingredients). Luckily, the problem with this plan was realized before the day of the concert when the landscape crew were doing the required lawn watering in compliance with the fire marshal.

6. The mini figurines

Several years ago, I worked at a nonprofit where we spent all day, every day doing hard (rewarding) work with kids. Once a year, we had a fundraiser that revolved around Legos. We had 1000+ people (kids and adults) come in and pay to do Lego activities with us.

That year, the fundraiser had an add on where you do a minifig (mini figurines) scavenger hunt type thing — join a session, help find minfigs and pick one to take home with you. For budget reasons, they were knockoff minifigs. They were things like Spiderman’s head on a construction worker body on purple and pink legs. Randomly put together pieces that had come in a giant grab bag.

In the second session of scavenger hunt, someone pointed out that some of them were apparently historical figure minifigs? And someone handed me one and I looked carefully … huh, it had a red armband and double lightning bolts.

Crap. Off brand Lego knockoffs provide minifigs for historical dioramas and apparently if you get the “grab bag,” they have Nazis mixed in with the superheros.

We shut things down for a few minutes for us to panic and find all the hidden minifigs. They were replaced with “safe” figs, and we had one poor staff person spend the rest of the day sorting through the offensive and non-offensive minifigs, keeping us one session ahead of the scheduled sessions of scavenger hunt. As far as we know, no Nazis were sent home with children.

Apparently the organization now only uses official minifigs for the Lego event.

7. The cast wrap party

The catering company I used to work for was hired to cater the series wrap party for Game of Thrones. All the stars were there and most of us caterers were fans of the show, so we were psyched to be there. On the night itself, we wondered why the energy in the room seemed so off and oddly subdued.

Then of course, the final season came out a few months later and we understood.

8. The invitation

I worked in higher education development at an institution where the fellows had strongly resisted appointing a professional fundraiser and instead appointed a senior fellow in History as development director – a charming chap but not a fundraiser at all. This manifested in many ways, but perhaps the best one was the event we held to thank a major donor who had contributed a significant sum. We booked a nice location, sorted out some catering, briefed team members ahead of the event, arrived on the day and waited. And waited. And waited some more. DD had one job, which was to invite the donor; he had not done it.

I left soon after this.

9. The chickens

I run a small performing arts venue that hosts over 200 performances/events per year. Here is a recent favorite story that, while low-stakes and neither full disaster nor victory, exemplifies the weirdness of running a public event space.

We had an event that was a collaboration between two very large, community-focused performance groups. Our venue has a strict no pets except licensed service animals and pre-approved on-stage animals policy. One of the performers had a service dog who came to the venue. This was fine. But it wasn’t clearly stated to the myriad other performers that this was a service dog. All of a sudden, the next day, several other cast members brought their dogs and then got deeply offended when we made them take them home. The next day was the public performance and, as audience started arriving, a man walked in with a hard-sided cat carrier. Imagine my surprise when I approached and discovered that it contained two chickens! Turns out his wife was in the show and wanted a picture in costume with her pet chickens. She had told her husband to wait outside for her, but he ignored that fact and was quite rude when we asked him to do so. So here I am, running all over the building, trying to figure out whose chickens these were and having to explain over and over again that no, I wasn’t joking. Yes, chickens. And then my staff kept pulling me aside and going, “Um … there’s a dude with chickens in the lobby?”

It all worked out – they went outside and got their chicken picture and then the husband and the chickens went home and they were never free range in our venue … but its become an ongoing joke whenever things go sideways: Look out for the chickens!

10. The teenager

I used to work fundraising walk events and we’d usually have a grab bag of random volunteers to help us run the event. One year, this older teenage boy who’d been signed up by his mum as part of his community service requirement (I think he was working off a traffic ticket) was assigned to my area.

This kid was only supposed to be there for a short shift of a few hours and since I’m sure it wasn’t his first choice of how to spend his Saturday, I wasn’t expecting too much. He wound up being one of the last people to leave the site, having worked for something like eight or nine hours hauling a lot of stuff around and doing a really good job at whatever we told him to do, all on a really warm day. He said that he had a great time and he really enjoyed himself. I always wondered if that day was the start of his events career.

The post the aggressive applause, the secret meal access, and other stories from event workers appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2026/04/the-aggressive-applause-the-secret-meal-access-and-other-stories-from-event-workers.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=37067

james_davis_nicoll

You too can help fund James Nicoll Reviews!

April 2026 Patreon Boost

jo posting in

tv_talk

Reactor Magazine has a list of all the science fiction, fantasy and horror shows premiering this month.

Here Are All the Genre TV Premieres Airing in April!

(Probably should add the caveat that this will be largely US-based so might not be ALL the shows...)

swan_tower

. . . is that twenty years ago today, my first novel was published.

Psych! My entire career since then has been a trick! The Doppelganger duology, the Onyx Court, the Wilders series, the Memoirs of Lady Trent and their sequel, my Legend of the Five Rings tie-ins, Driftwood, The Waking of Angantyr, the Rook and Rose trilogy as M.A. Carrick, the short stories and novelettes and novellas, the game writing, the poetry, the Hugo rocket on the shelf behind me as I type this: all of it has been my April Fool's joke upon you! Hahahahahah, you all have been fooled into thinking I can write!

And the best part of the joke is, I'm not gonna give it up. I have stuck it out in this bonkers industry for twenty years, and I fully intend to stick it out for another twenty at least. I will keep up the gag with more novels, more short fiction, more poetry. My commitment to the bit is so strong that today marks the publication of THREE new works: the rai "In the salt-drowned lands" and the sonnet "Gorgoneia" in Vol.031 of The Rialto Books Review, and the short story "All Under Heaven" in issue #2 of Adventitious. That latter, which is free to read online, demonstrates how far I'll go for this joke: fully fifteen years ago, in the aftermath of the Tōhoku earthquake, a (fortunately very patient) friend made won my offering in the charity auction and asked me to write a short story about Oda Nobunaga's sack of the Enryakuji monastery. It took me eleven damn years to write the story and then a little longer to sell it, but now -- once again on April Fool's Day; see how well-crafted the joke is? -- it is finally out, the latest addition to a gag two decades long and counting.

I even woke up to a poetry acceptance this morning. My joke is so good, other people are telling it back to me today!

Thank you all for being such a good set of marks for so long. I could not sustain this joke without you, and you are the ones who make it all worthwhile.

slippery_fish

Random news:

# Out Of Nowhere, Firefly Is Getting A Reboot
# Joseph Duggar of ‘19 Kids and Counting’ Faces Child Sex Abuse Charges News that surprise no one.
# Hachette pulls horror novel Shy Girl after suspected AI use

Random articles:

# Vindicated At Last In My Years-Long Loathing Of Grammarly
# Stuck in the Weeds: An Invasive Plant Meets Bureaucracy
# The People Falsely Accused of Using AI Clean, precise prose is now a liability. Non-native English speakers and autistic writers are paying the price.
# The Camps Promising to Turn You—or Your Son—Into an Alpha Male

Random Vids:

# The Deadly Raw Milk Influencer Deception. Here We Go Again.
# We Need to Talk About the Sailor Slipper Copying Drama
# Joseph & Kendra Duggar Arrest | What We Know So Far 3/20/26
# The Man Running a 50-Year-Old Paratha Stand on the Delhi Streets | Street Eats | Bon Appétit
# American Highschoolers try British Comfort Food for the first time!
# How New Orleans' Best Po-Boy is Made | Made to Order | Bon Appétit
# Trying the Weirdest British Food! ft. Dave Franco & Bobby Moynihan
# Costco’s Armageddon Survival Meals are SHOCKING!
# US vs UK: Trying Each Other's Grilled Cheese
# Keith Eats A Full English Breakfast with Jolly at Fallow

Random Trailers:

# SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY

jesse_the_k

Serious

I can’t summarize my complicated feelings about Metafilter. One reason I continue reading is what I learn from discussions like

Big Mean Trans Thread
This is a thread for trans people to vent and be righteously uncharitable about transphobic bullshit on Metafilter and otherwise.

https://metatalk.metafilter.com/26888/big-mean-trans-thread

“Metatalk” is where members vent about the site itself; this discussion responds to a couple of (now-banned) jerks who dropped turds in the weekly LGBTQIA+ News Post fro 27 March.

The Meta posters taught me that the terms AFAB and AMAB have been appropriated by anti-trans bigots to emphasize that “real” gender is what the doctors put on the birth certificate. I won’t be using those terms any more. I have no need to know someone’s bodily configuration; if it’s relevant, they’ll tell me.

Sublime

HTXStudio invents Rube Goldberg-level technology, then produces succinct, hilarious, open-captioned (but not described) vertical videos about how and why they did it. Towards the goal of limiting doomscrolling in general and phone use in bed, they made a bed for smartphones:

Watch on YouTube or

( stream it here )

Silly

April Fool’s delight at AO3 — be sure to check the upper left corner!

Spotlight on Omegas
Omegas are the glue that holds us all together, providing the essential social lubricant needed for our society to function—and yet they are often maligned and treated as lesser-than. This April, we are changing part of our logo to highlight omegas as part of our commitment to the inclusion and wellbeing of our omega volunteers and users.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260401173413/https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34621