Tinhuviel Artanis

The genius invention that made peace with lions

A 12-year-old boy invented a system of lights that mimicked human patrols, thus shooing lions away from homes and livestock. This reduced interspecies conflicts, allowing lions to coexist peacefully with humans and their livestock.

Think about how humans and wildlife interact. Where there are dangerous conflicts as above, seek to understand each other's behavior and how small changes can reduce or eliminate conflicts so that all species can live and let live. Watch for effective solutions and spread them.

Sunshine Revival Challenge 6: Game Night

Journaling prompt: What games do you play, if any? Are you a solo-gamer or do you view games as a social activity?

Creative prompt: Write a story/fic around the theme "game night".

Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.



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The July crowdfunding Creative Jam is open with a theme of "Heroism -- Real or Perceived."  Come give us prompts, or claim some for your own inspiration.


What I Have Written




From My Prompts

I made these tonight.

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

How should we measure the productivity of a society?

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Man Builds House Out of ABANDONED PALLETS in the Middle of the Forest in 121 Days

In this video you will see how I built a house from free pallets by myself near the Samotochka River. From start to finish - life in the forest, survival, manual work without power tools. Everything was done only with the help of hand tools and natural materials that I could find around. This house by the river became a place for relaxation, silence and solitude away from civilization.

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Today is mostly sunny, muggy, and sweltering. :P  It rained yesterday evening.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds. 

EDIT 7/18/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/18/25 -- I picked 2 yellow pear and a round yellow tomato from the septic garden.  The yellow pears are considerably bigger than last year's which were more cherry size than salad size.

Zinnias and garlic chives are blooming.  :D

The white Toscana strawberry pot got knocked over, so I had to put more potting soil in that.  The pink one has sent out a runner!  :D  I'll have to keep an eye on it and see about propagating that.

EDIT 7/18/25 -- I planted a wild senna and a purple coneflower beside the barrel garden.  These were rescued from the lawn near the wildflower garden.

EDIT 7/18/25 -- I filled a couple more pots with several wild senna plants from the lawn around the wildflower garden.

The mower is back, but the forecast still calls for days of rain.

EDIT 7/18/25 -- I refilled the hopper feeder and walked around the yard a bit.

I am done for the night.

TRANSFORM Your Garden To A FIREFLY Habitat!

* Avoid pesticides and other agrochemicals.

* Protect from light pollution.

* Plant native species.

* Leave some tall grass.

* Provide moisture.

* Leaf litter and woodpiles also offer cover.

We crossed 25 watermelon varieties and got this!

These are landrace watermelons grown in a food forest permaculture.  David the Good is one of the few people other than myself who seems to grow what I would consider laissez-faire permaculture, which turns the yard into a messy but productive jungle.  :D

Remember that when you're growing landraces or even open-pollinated crops that you save, your plants will adapt to what you do.  If you don't want to weed or water, then select for plants that can beat the competition.  I throw garlic chives and other alliums all over the place.  Comfrey can take care of itself.  The vegetables are still in pots to minimize weeds, but I'm hoping to get a sunflower landrace going eventually because I am having crap luck with commercial ones.  I get a few that bloom but not many.  I'm getting a few volunteers, though, so I'm encouraging that.

Today's theme is Homestuck.


100quadrantedships  -- Because We Don't Have Enough Of Quadrants
Quadrants, homestuck, shipping.
[Somewhat active with last post in May.]

addme_fandom  -- addme fandom
Find friends who share your fannish obsessions.
[Active with one post in July.]

unconventionalcourtship  -- Unconventional Courtship
Brooding Strangers! Secret Pregnancies! Enigmatic Rakes! All those tropes (or conventions, if you will) you love to hate (until you discover their secret, tragic backstory and fall head over heels for them) are here, ready to be used for humour and awesomeness in a new fic about your favourite star-crossed lovers. 'Unconventional Courtship' is a panfandom challenge that aims to produce fics longer than 1,000 words based on a Mills & Boon/Harlequin novel summary.
[Active with multiple posts in July.]

Folks have mentioned an interest in questions and conversations that make them think. So I've decided to offer more of those. This batch features hobbies.

Makeup art is a hobby that spans branches such as facepainting, bodypainting, cosplay, special effects, theatrical makeup, drag, kink, otherkin, gyaru, boudoir, glamour, and more. It all depends on what you want to make up yourself or a playmate as.

On Dreamwidth, consider communities like daily_gyaru, edgoreyanfashion, justcreate, sw_costumes, andthefreaksclub.

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Cognitive collapse and the nuclear codes: When leaders lose control

A shocking study reveals that many leaders of nuclear-armed nations—including US presidents and Israeli prime ministers—were afflicted by serious health problems while in office, sometimes with their conditions hidden from the public. From dementia and depression to addiction and chronic diseases, these impairments may have affected their decision-making during pivotal global crises.


Hardly a surprise. Sanity isn't often a requirement of leadership. Venereal transmission only requires falling out of the right vagina; election only requires being popular.

Have you ever wondered how you'd handle the gold-madness of Thror? Consider that in this context. And then compare the effects of a dragon to those of a bomb.

Today is mostly sunny, humid, and hot. It rained copiously yesterday.

The internet serviceman came out today and installed some new equipment, which will hopefully fix the problems we've been having. We went outside to look at that. The antenna is now atop the bathroom roof, much higher and pointing south instead of east, so we have a better signal already.

My partner Doug had already started bushwhacking a path to the east edge of the yard, where the old antenna pointed. We still want to finish that for the sake of edge access. It didn't get mowed last year. We expected it to be full of weeds. We did not expect it to be full of 10-12' high hackberry and walnut saplings that obviously show multiple years of growth. :/ I strongly suspect that they waded into that position. I told them very firmly to move it or lose it, because we are serious about restoring that path.

I have not yet fed the birds. I have seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches plus a mourning dove at the feeders. A cardinal was trying to get through the living room window, so I had to shut my office door to block the false flyway between the south living room window and the north office window.

I fed the birds.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/17/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/17/25 -- I planted 2 wild senna, one under the contorta willow and one under the apricot tree. The ones in the wildflower garden are blooming. :D I sowed seeds of apricot, white peach, and cherry plum. The latter look like beach plums to me -- they're smaller than apricots -- and we got a whole carton of them. It will be interesting to see if they sprout.

I've been hearing thunder.

EDIT 7/17/25 -- I took some pictures around the yard.

EDIT 7/17/25 -- I refilled the birdfeeders.

EDIT 7/17/25 -- I potted up 3 apples fallen from the birdgift tree.

I've heard a red-winged blackbird and a house wren, but didn't see them.

Cicadas are singing. Fireflies are coming out.

EDIT 7/17/25 -- It's raining, so I am done for the night.

Wait...The Worst Possible US Disaster Just Got EVEN WORSE?!? (Cascadia Megaquake)

Every once in a while, I see a more realistic extrapolation of the dangers in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, compared to the usual drastic underestimations.  This video looks at some chain-reaction problems such as wildfires and chemical spills that can cause secondary waves of casualties.

You can read my thread about the Big One, but bear in mind that Terramagne-America has much better disaster preparedness than here, and local-America's scenario would be much worse.

These are the setting and content notes for "Beautiful, Damn Hard, Increasingly Useful."

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This poem came out of the July 15, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by bairnsidhe and siliconshaman. It also fills the "Cool Water" square in my 7-1-25 card for the Western Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the Kraken thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It follows "But an Empty Shell" ($280) -- which, oops, hasn't been sponsored and posted yet.

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Today is mostly cloudy, humid, and hot.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/16/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I'm hearing thunder and dark clouds are overhead.

EDIT 7/16/25 -- Aaaaand now it's raining.

This is today's freebie. It was inspired by a prompt from dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "defenestration" square in my 7-1-25 card for the Western Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Frankenstein's Family. It follows "Incompetence, Sloppy Thinking, and Laziness" so read that first or this won't make much sense.

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The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED. Thank you for your time and attention. Please keep an eye on this page as I am still writing.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "anything goes." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

Note that our internet connection has been bad for well over a month. Sometimes it's down completely, other times things like Dreamwidth and searches won't run. So I'm losing a lot of work time and may only have access for half a day or less. Given this limitation, there's a higher chance of actually getting things written for prompts that use characters, settings, etc. that are already established.

Two poems recently attracted attention with regards to extending their story arcs, so anyone can ask for a followup to these:
"Incompetence, Sloppy Thinking, and Laziness" -- Victor is displeased with Ghenadie shirking work assigned as fines.
"An Interest in the Affairs of Your Government" -- Frank the Crank accidentally gets elected to the City Council in Mercedes.

Stuck for ideas? You can find prompts by ...
* browsing planned poems for Aquariana and the Maldives, The Big One, Broken Angels, Calliope and Vagary, Officer Pink and Turq, Pips and Joshua, or Shiv. (Some of these I've already done, so they're not all up to date, but others I haven't done yet.)
* browsing my Serial Poetry page for favorite threads or characters.
* browsing my QUILTBAG list, Romantic Orientations in My Characters, Sexual Orientations in My Characters, Gender Identities in My Characters, or My Characters with Disabilities for favorites.
* naming a poetic form you'd like to see written.
* picking a prompt from my current bingo cards: Western Bingo Card 7-1-25
* picking some from the Bingo Generator prompt lists.
* looking up fun tropes on Fanlore.
* choosing an unusual word.
* plugging a favorite topic into your search engine and choosing a picture that looks interesting.
* anything short. I could especially use short poems today as other prompts are likely to run long.
* standalone ideas, if you're a fan of that rather than series.

What Is a Poetry Fishbowl?

Writing is usually considered a solitary pursuit. One exception to this is a fascinating exercise called a "fishbowl." This has various forms, but all of them basically involve some kind of writing in public, usually with interaction between author and audience. A famous example is Harlan Ellison's series of "stories under glass" in which he sits in a bookstore window and writes a new story based on an idea that someone gives him. Writing classes sometimes include a version where students watch each other write, often with students calling out suggestions which are chalked up on the blackboard for those writing to use as inspiration.

In this online version of a Poetry Fishbowl, I begin by setting a theme; today's theme is "anything goes." I invite people to suggest characters, settings, and other things of any type. Then I use those prompts as inspiration for writing poems.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )

These 545-million-year-old fossil trails just rewrote the story of evolution

A groundbreaking study suggests that the famous Cambrian explosion—the dramatic burst of diverse animal life—might have actually started millions of years earlier than we thought. By analyzing ancient trace fossils, researchers uncovered evidence of complex, mobile organisms thriving 545 million years ago, well before the traditionally accepted timeline. These early creatures likely had segmented bodies, muscle systems, and even directional movement, signaling a surprising level of biological sophistication. Their behavior and mobility, preserved in fossil trails, offer new insight into how complex life evolved, potentially rewriting one of the most important chapters in Earth’s evolutionary history.

Based on an audience poll, this is the free epic for the July 1, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was spillover from the April 5, 2022 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from rix_scaedu. It also fills the "communication" square in my 4-4-22 "Aspects" card for the Genderplay Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Arts and Crafts America.

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Today is partly sunny and mild. It drizzled for much of yesterday.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/14/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/14/25 -- I picked a chocolate cherry tomato from the new picnic table.

EDIT 7/14/25 -- I picked a few blackberries. The first crop is done, the second is not ripe yet.

EDIT 7/14/25 -- I watered both picnic table gardens.

The July 1, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl made its $200 goal, so you get a free epic. Everyone is eligible to vote in this poll. I will keep it open at least until Monday night. If there's a clear answer then, I'll close it. Otherwise I may leave it open a little longer.

Here are your options:

"Meeting in the Middle"
Kan Ying sees through the lies of the Parthians and makes his way to Rome.
76 lines

"Once the Avalanche Has Begun"
A foolish choice in a neighboring town makes life challenging for Shaeth's followers.
70 lines