rthstewart: (Default)
Sunday, September 25th, 2022 09:07 pm
Well, [personal profile] snacky wrote me the awesome don't know where you're coming from but you're coming soon Peter/Sansa and ran the exchange![personal profile] syrena_of_the_lake wrote some wonderful things this year, including two gifts for me,Crouching scientist, hidden dragon a Eustace time travel with talking dinosaurs story (yes really) andAll shall love me and despair about the Narnia war machine, goose on a moose


And I did three stories!

For Love and rock music,
Fly By Night (15571 words)

Summary: Two months after D-Day, WC Reginald Tebbitt (code name Scribe) receives an urgent message from his agent, Mrs. Susan Caspian. Mrs. Caspian is still operating secretly in Nazi-occupied France under the name Jeanne-Louise Lambert (code name Rat). Tebbitt launches a desperate rescue mission and enlists the assistance of Rat's brother, Harold Linch aka Edmund Morgan aka Edmund Just aka Harold Jaller aka Justin Merle (code name Crow), who is reputed to be the fourth best forger in British Intelligence.


Yes, a return to war-time France, The Stone Gryphon and the Lucy and Edmund part of the story, Heart and Crow Make the Peace. the unwritten except I keep filling it in in bits and pieces. This follows the chapters, Heart and Crow Go To War and Kiss me Like a Soldier Headed For War, Rat and Sword Go To War, Black, White and Gray Wolf In Between (where Lucy runs away from school and Helen is visited by Briony, Hound and Nag and Chaos and Inspired Genius.Love and Rock Music is the primary Susan/Tebbitt shipper and has been insistent that I not kill off David Lowrey (who? Yeah, I know, but SHE remembers this minor character from TQSIT) so when I drew her for the Fic Exchange I decided to throw sense and most of my carefully constructed historical fiction research out the window and go for it.

The Star Wars/Narnia xover was for vialethe, syrena_of_the_lake, waywren and be_themoon. It turns out that in one of the recent Leia-focused Star Wars novels, the author Beth Revis gave Leia a sword and named it Rhindon, after Peter's sword. Really. So, well obviously I HAD TO USE IT. It's part of my Susan Joins the Rebels series.

Queentessential (5547 words)
Summary: Once a queen of Narnia, always a queen of Narnia. Or Princess of Alderaan for that matter.
 

And last, utter crack of the Washington DC insider variety, modern AU, Lucy Pevensie is a vampire crashing the conservative Heritage Foundation Halloween Party.  Stay away if politics are not your thing or if you aren't comfortable with fictional murder of the Republican Congressional leadership and a couple of Republican governors. 
rthstewart: (Default)
Thursday, May 14th, 2020 10:40 pm
  • A fact sheet obviously written by Kush and McKinsey on the strategic national stockpile -- "Our next generation SNS will be improved by increasing supplies of critically-needed items, integrating predictive analytics to determine needs, leveraging technology to provide real-time visibility of supply chains, and reducing dependency on foreign supplies." What the hell does that even mean?  It's somebody's powerpoint from a supply chain presentation in 2019. And the SNS, gosh maybe because they were funnelling funds to bioterrorism defense and smallpox vaccine interests owned by Adminstration friends? or because Republicans declined funding requests?  Or they didn't repair the stuff that was in the stockpile?  Absolute fuckwits.
  • The evening White House COVID-19 Update I have to plow through every single fucking night included this wonderful gem:
    • Former Cleveland Clinic Employee and Chinese “Thousand Talents” Participant Arrested for Wire Fraud (Dr. Qing Wang, a former Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF) employee, is charged with false claims and wire fraud related to more than $3.6 million in grant funding that Dr. Wang and his research group received from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  DOJ press release here
Now I'm very curious. this is a COVID-19 update. Why is this item here? Maybe Dr. Wang and his CCF research group got a grant from NIH for COVID research in, say mid-March for $3.6 million, CCF got suspicious, fired Wang, reported him to NIH who brought in the FBI and DOJ and they managed, while everyone is working remotely and travel is banned, managed to pull together a criminal case in less than 60 days?
Or maybe this relates to conduct that dates back I dunno, months? years? And funny but the DOJ and FBI press releases contain NOTHING about when this occurred. Maybe it's COVID related? Sure.
Or maybe it's just because Dr. Wang is Chinese? You think?
  • And then there is this Executive Order,on Delegating Authority Under the DPA to the CEO of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to Respond to the COVID-19 Outbreak

    OK so maybe the US is helping other countries with loans through the IDFC? Maybe?Oh look.  The Prez is delegating presidential authority to Adam Boehler, who is SURPRISE a Kush friend who helped fuck up the supply chain pandemic response.  And so Kush's friend has just been given:
    • Accordingly, I am delegating authority under title III of the Act to make loans, make provision for purchases and commitments to purchase, and take additional actions to create, maintain, protect, expand, and restore the domestic industrial base capabilities, including supply chains within the United States and its territories (“domestic supply chains”), needed to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak.
  • So using the IDFC for domestic supply?  Or? what exactly?  Make low interest government loans to his friends in healthcare startups to come up with software companies already have?  Analytics you already they use?  You really think behemoths like Merck, Pfizer, J&J, 3M, Mckesson and AmerisourceBergen aren't amazing at predicting supply? 

/rant over  we're all fine here.  I'm going to post this and go to bed and think about fic I actually put down 4 sentences to this evening...
rthstewart: (Feminazi)
Sunday, March 8th, 2020 02:02 pm
I've been on travel and gearing up for presentations the last month.  Yesterday,  I was on the way to another conference when it was cancelled 2 hours before I would have boarded a plane. So suddenly, yesterday at 4 PM, I had nothing to do.  I binged 4 episodes of Project Runway (Don't tell me how it ends but I've been very amused by Victoria from Moldova -- I've been to the Moldovan part of Romania in the 90s). 

And now I've attempted to tackle a backlog of hundreds of three sentence fics and my DW notifications -- I've got well over a thousand separate entries and emails ... it's not happening. 

So, alas, dear F-list, if something important or terrible or wonderful has happened and I've not seen it or responded, by deepest apologies.  Please share what's happened in the last month if you are so inclined.

For me, it's all been work -- so much work.  Weed -- specifically cannabidiol or CBD and prescription drug importation have taken over my life.  I won't bore you with the details but my powerpoints are gorgeous.  I warn you, I'm not kind to either CBD (mostly fraud, lotsa bad data, the placebo effect is profound and if it works, it's probably the THC) or importing drugs from Canada (leave the drugs in Canada, import the pricing model and repeal the non-Interference clause) and I'm very sad I never got to vote for Warren, Harris, Klobuchar, or Gillibrand.  Oh look, another old white dude.  But god this is all for nothing if we don't take the Senate.

And as for COVID-19, well, our health infrastructure is shit and even being well off and well insured won't protect you.  Millionaires will have to wait for hospital beds too.    I'm not panicking for myself or my son who is traveling on spring break.  We both have robust immune systems and practice good hygiene.  My spousal unit, on the other hand, has the immune system of a 90 year old, is vulnerable to respiratory disease due to pneumonia 2 years ago,  does not have the spoons to remember things like washing his hands and would never, ever deign to use hand sanitizer.  Stress induced memory loss and depression is a thing and wow, I just hope he doesn't get too close to people on public transit.

I think the product sourcing from China is going to be an issue -- so many raw materials are sourced there -- not just pharmaceuticals and medical devices but lots of food ingredients too.  I'm very amused that Campbell's Soup is seeing a big surge -- they source about 90% of their ingredients in the US -- or maybe Mexico and Canada as part of NAFTA. This will likely spur a long overdue and important conversation about supply chain resiliency -- it had begun in the pharmaceutical space last year and I see it expanding which would be a very good thing for U.S. workers. 

So, I'm going to head to the grocery store and pick up a few things, maybe another can of tomatoes and some frozen things.  Can I get you something? 

How are you?

rthstewart: (Default)
Saturday, October 12th, 2013 07:51 am
The NFE Madness round posted here! AND TWO IMPORTANT THINGS! Someone wrote a lovely Susan story for me! World Enough

And someone else wrote a story set in TSG-related verse (set during Apostolic Way) involving Peter and the rabbit he showed to Morgan in the AUish Lost in Translation I wrote.  It's adorable and sad and lovely,  The Rabbit of the High King

There are some other really fun stories, too, so go check them out!


I should be posting a new H&M chapter this soon.  Here's a snippet.

It took Pierce less than a day to wish that his sister, whom he loved and respected very much, had not come home. Three years ago, Morgan had been tense, intense, awkward, unrelenting, and even obnoxious. Her changes had been slow and beautiful. He had seen his sister grow in confidence, holding all her acumen in place, but softening her harsh and unforgiving edges. She had become more balanced and flexible. The causes were many, he knew – some combination of Jina’s support and friendship, the regard the other Narnians had for her, and King Edmund’s – well, having experienced it now himself, Pierce called it love (he had no idea what Morgan and King Edmund would call it).

It was as if all that goodness had been erased and Morgan’s interpersonal timepiece had been turned backward.

In fact, she was far worse than before.

By the second morning, Morgan reduced the cooks to tears over the coffee. She and Father had argued into the noon bell, three days running, when he told her that he was not going to take away the old accounts of hers that he had given to their two new ADs, Chase and Wells. Morgan was to train, not steal, a distinction she didn’t grasp. In a moment of impatient and immature, though very profound, insight, Morgan stomped and shouted, “I don’t like to share my things!”

I owe comments and thanks to many people for generous reviews.  Thanks so much.  I've not responded as I've been trying to finish the above chapter and as you might have read in the paper, things have been very unsettled in the area I live in.  Your support has been a bright spot in a very, very dark time.  A brief bit on that below. 

And behind the cut a brief comment on the federal government shut down

ExpandBrief rant against those who think our President is a foreign-born Muslim and the anti-Christ )