#wayland rice

[notalakelurk]

NixOS Rice Journey

I've always considered myself something of a minimalist when it comes to function over form and beauty within simplicity, but there comes a time in every Linux user's life when they must rice.

Now, firstly, I want to acknowledge that @kfithen's recent ricing journey is like, 50% of the reason I went through with this (\shrug/ he had a good idea, what can I say?!). To be fair, the other 50% is the control and understanding that a good rice gives a person over their computer and environment. I want to know how everything works, and I want to be the person who makes it all come together really well.

I'm not really the type for flashy things or eye-catching rices / eye-candy (I've been using only I3wm for almost the entirety of my Linux history), so I want my rice to take a more subtle, simple approach. I use NixOS because I want my system to stay with me forever and only do what it needs to. I want to spend years optimizing everything I use until my OS reaches its minimal state. In the same way, I want my rice to display the elegant simplicity of nothing extra. I want some basic utilities and visuals that look nice, but aren't distracting.

Most of all, I want my rice to embody my own spirit, or at least what I strive to be. I want to put work into making something that does everything it needs to without encroaching on others. Ideally, I will be able to look at this every day for the rest of my life and it will help me feel secure in myself.

All that said, here's what I've done so far:

Migrated from X11 to Wayland

Switched to greetd and tuigreet for my displaymanager

Switched from I3wm to Sway

Setup Waybar to tell me what I need to know

Setup a custom desktop wallpaper (as opposed to the default Xfce wallpaper or Sway grey)

Setup vifm to view and manage my filesystem

Setup ivm, foot, mpv, etc. to replace xfce-given programs

Upgraded from NixOS 23.11 to 24.05

[Image ID: A (16:9) screenshot of my desktop. There are no windows open. The wallpaper prominently features a modified Nix logo in the center, taking up a little over a third of the vertical space. The logo has been modified so that each of the six "arms" corresponds to a stripe in the trans-nonbinary-flag; the top-right corresponds to the blue stripe at the top of the flag and the arms continue down the flag in a clockwise motion (i.e. blue, pink, yellow, white, purple, black). The background of the wallpaper is a dark grey that is light enough for the black arm to be visible. At the bottom of the screenshot is a Waybar status bar. On the left it shows (left to right) the sway workspaces, workspace name, and scratchpad; on the right it shows (left to right) the system volume (with wireplumber), the keyboard layout, the free space on the root partition, the memory and sway information of the system, the local ip address and wifi-connection strength of the system, the core usage of the system, and the current time and date of the system. The bar is styled with the default styles (for now). \End ID]

[Image ID: Another desktop screenshot. This one shows three windows open with the Sway window manager/compositor. One window, containing my home-manager configuration open in neovim (using the slate colorscheme), is the result of a horizontal split and lies on the left half of the screen. The right half of the screen is vertically split into two windows. The top displays an unstyled vifm, and the bottom displays the output of neofetch. The inner gaps of the windows are set to 10 in sway and there are no other gap configurations. \End ID]

So far, I've been focusing mostly on getting my system working again (leaving xfce completely left a big mark on my system, previously I was using Thunar and a billion other things I took for granted). I'm going through another terminal-based-stuff craze so I'm trying to do more and more stuff through cli and tui applications (flameshot -> shotman, xfce-img-viewer -> imv, xfce-video-player -> mpv, thunar -> vifm).

The only thing I've done cosmetically so far is the background. I wanted to get something that wouldn't clutter my screen if I ever implement transparency, so I didn't want to do anything too complicated. (I'll admit, my first thoughts were Homestuck, Lackadaisy, trains, etc., but those were way to complicated (save for some of the Homestuck stuff, that was good, I just didn't super vibe with anything)). I'm really happy with how it turned out though (the Nix logo is great for customization)! I think the trans-nonbinary-flag colors look great here and fit the vibe sickly. Also, it's Pride Month, so how could I not have something queer on my screen all the time?!?!?! (Well, besides Linux, and NixOS especially, that's queer already, lol).

This post is getting a bit long, so I'll quit my yappin' and end it off with a little summary of what I hope to do next:

Get some sort of transparency (what's the use in having that beautiful wallpaper if you can't see it, plus the background has a low enough complexity that transparency will actually work well)

Set some standards for theming/colors and put them in place (right now my Waybar and vifm especially just don't look right) (this one is going to require a lot of work, but there are also a lot of people who do this amazingly; plus, I've got some colors to work with already :), I really like the the "slate" vim theme and those trans-nonbinary colors are a great start as well, particularly that purple!)

MOAR TERMINAL (maybe try again with steam-tui, risk discord-tui, and re-examine links/lynx) (plus this really helps with fileviewer in vifm)

Try out nix-flakes (I really need to figure out what these things are, they sound right up my alley!)

Setup backups of my system / get all my configs into nix (the few that aren't already there) (I have some suspicion that nix-flakes might help with this)

Learn more (there's always more to learn!)

Welp, that's about it for now! See ya :3

[scaththefloof]

I recently installed wayfire, and oh boy after a full 24 hours I have never been this conflicted with a desktop environment, after a day it's either "wow this is amazing," or "who tf made this piece of shit." I always go further on to try and see if this is just a random issue that I had, but this is like no other.

wayfire is a wayland compositor based on wlroots that aims to make a customizable, extendable, and lightweight environment that doesn't sacrifice looks in the name of being lightweight and able to run on shitty hardware. Perfect something that I can run on my chromebook! I already use i3 on my chromebook but I wanted to see if it could run it, and also I wanted to try out wayfire and I'm not going to lock my main laptop to wayfire when I can also try wayfire on the 16 gig emmc on my chromebook just to see how lightweight it is.

but oh boy "customizable" wayfire has the shittiest customization I have ever seen, I see all these rices on r/unixporn and I respect everyone who can make wayfire look good becuase if I can only color the background of the panel, but I can't touch everything else. Then we got some serious problems when it comes to customizability here.

look at this bullshit

to explain what's wrong here, firefox uses the gtk toolset, and the "Customize Look and Feel" app is actually Lxappearance, which pulls gtk themes and applies them to your desktop environment or window manager, I use lxappearance on i3 to theme it up a little.

But here, not just firefox, but EVERY GTK APPLICATION suffers from this not being installed. Also you can set the icon theme in lxappearance and it applies to your DE/WM. Nope, not in wayfire.

And you can also see my issue here with the wf-shell panel as well. You can customize the look of the panel in the wf-shell.ini config file, but you also need to use CSS to change the look and feel as well. But when I set the css file for the panel in the wf-shell.ini, nothing happens, nothing is applied. I even tried to sanity check myself to make sure it wasn't my css was wrong and just copied the default css and still nothing was applied.

and there is no issue with the version of lxappearance I installed. Because I got i3, and copied my configs from my other system over to my chromebook and installed picom (I did this before trying out wayfire but wayfire didn't take up much space on my drive so it worked out fine) and look, it works, Firefox is supposed to switch the theme to dark to follow the system.

also another complaint is why do the windows on wayfire have different types of decoration, what is with that?

this is just insane that in the first 24 hours I encountered issues like this, that are literal dealbreakers for me, because i3, yes you have to manually configure vs wayfire you can get a graphical configuration manager (the package is wcm). But i3 doesn't do all this stupid shit that wayfire does, and most likely there is some graphical configuration manager for i3 that I just don't know about. The thing is though, I already configured my i3. All I do now is install what I need and copy the config files so I don't really need a config manager now.

The thing is I ran into issues INSTALLING the damn thing. I couldn't install it from the AUR even though they said that's how you install it on arch! EVEN THE ARCH WIKI SAYS THAT'S HOW YOU INSTALL IT! But instead I had to install it by cloning the git and building from source!

Then there were also issues with the sound, I booted up doom and literally every sound was laggy and slow, I thought this was because I was using pulseaudio, which is weird because my first time using arch I couldn't listen to music at all on anything other than youtube with pipewire, but pulseaudio worked and so I made a note to never use pipewire for audio. Pipewire can be used for the display stuff but don't let pipewire cook with the audio. But Pipewire didn't fix the issue, and so I tried to see maybe pairing it with lxqt would work. I know someone who uses wayfire, and they use it with lxqt so... Yeah I was told to get a fork of lxqt-session so I could pair lxqt with wayfire. The instructions on github say to use make to install it, but there are no makefiles. That's the same thing as "plug the computer in and turn it on," but there's no power supply. So I uninstalled lxqt because lxqt has always been the bane of my existence when it comes to using lightweight DEs. XFCE is better by a mile, but XFCE suffers the same fate as lxqt, they aren't wayland. So I have respect to @linux-real that's the person that I talked about with the using wayfire + lxqt and they managed to get it looking nice.

A lot of people had great experiences with wayfire and it's most likely not for me. I would like to try hyprland as it a wayland compositor with high customizability, but there is a controversy behind hyprland.

But to sum it up. I tried wayfire because someone recommended it to me and said it was great, and sadly I was hit with issues and issues. And so I didn't get to see it. I have all respect for the people who were able to get this thing to actually work on their laptop.

[juliaisstupid]

i'm done with ricing Linux for a while now lol

really liked the final result of this one, especially the square corner variant

hyprland + eww on wayland

it's fucking 3am I should be sleeping.

[cuethemulti]

hmm...

top five desserts

top five video games to play or watch playthroughs of

top five movie characters (any movie)

top five subjects to learn about

top five species of birds

Ooo good ones (these are not in any particular order)

Top 5 favorite deserts

1. Strawberry Cheesecake

2. Flan

3. Rice Pudding

4. Nestle Crunch Chocolate Bar

5. Frozen Yogurt Bars

Top 5 games to play (playthrough edition)

1. The Last Gaurdian

2. Detroit: Become Human

3. Subnautica

4. Little Nightmares

5. Little Miss Fortune

Top 5 favorite movie characters

1. Loki (Thor movies)

2. Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Rocky Horror Show)

3. Stu Macher (Scream)

4. Wendy Torrance (The Shining)

5. Jace Wayland (Mortal Instruments)

Top five subjects to learn about

1. Space (fun fact: there is more stars in space for each grain of sand in all of Earth)

2. Psychology (another fun fact: a human head stays conscious for around 20 seconds after it’s been beheaded)

3. Performance Ethics

4. Screenwriting

5. Spirituality

Top five birds

1.Oilbirds

2. Black-necked stilt

3. Wallcreeper

4. Amethyst Starling

5. Red breasted parakeet

[hydralisk98]

LibreVastServitor computing stack designs 1/?

Just a quick reminder here, this is a customized computing stack manifestation game where I simply write what I desire and then let the wider universe manifest it for me whatever way that means, including personal efforts of mine. Boils down from customizing and adapting research material into a actionable series of items to manifest.

Ashur dream specifications

(mid-tower personal workstation computer)

2+ 2560x1440p monitors (one vertical, one or more horizontal)

Intel Core i5-4690 @ 3.5 GHz with its 4-cores (hoping forward to upgrade the RISC-V + OpenPOWER like processor for something decent with ~12-cores & much more open design) central processor unit

32GB of RAM

Some recent mid-range AMD GPU

64 GB Linux swap partition (mostly for virtual machines and RAMdisk partitions)

4TB+ SSD storage

Bluray burner

Floppy drive

Cassette / datasette drive

Themed GRUB bootloader

S6 init system

Arch-like package manager and software ecosystem

Customized alternative Linux kernel between Linux Libre & Zen kernel ( XanMod + Liquorix )

ZealOS, Parade, OpenBSD, OpenIndiana...

CLADO, DIS, Venera, Perseus, Maskoch, Synod, Monad, Valenz, Constans?

KDE Plasma with Liquid shell as desktop environment, complete with custom ricing, dot files & all the KDE desktop environment utilities;

Bash + Fish, Tmux, Astro-Neo-Vim with LSP, Emacs, LibreOffice Suite, Calligra, Bottles, Wine, WineTricks, QGIS, Firefox, LibreWolf, Dolphin, Konsole, Inkscape, Karbon, OpenStreetMap, GPlates, GProjector, Itch, Steam, GOG Galaxy, Lutris, Cyberpunk 2077, Ken Silverman's, FreeBASIC, Common Lisp, Godot + Qodot, VLC, MPV, .ogg / .ogv media player, musical tracker, 'Landchad.net', Brasero, K3B, FloppyFormatter, LibreCAD, AutoCAD, Blender, Kate, Qt, Nim, MUSL, C compiler, assembly monitor, HxD debugger, Rust, Swift, Kotlin, F#, C#, GNU make, NASM, Sweet Home 3D, some digital audio workstation software, Audacious, FFMPEG, Wayland, Morevna OpenToonz, some HTTP(S) web server suite, MongoDB, Hexo, Netlify CMS, RSS feed reader + generator, Pomodoro, Calendar, timely Tracker, Notion-like service, Tape, Gollum, some level editors, FreeCiv, The Sims 2, SimCity 4, Quake 1, Doom 1 & Doom 2, Markdown / Argdown, Konqueror, some WYSISYG rich media editor, some Raycaster engine, Daggerfall Unity, Portal 2, Source (1 & 2) Engine modding, some VirtualTableTop software, some remote desktop control software like VNC, OpenSSH, some distributed share storage software, Trenchbroom, StableDiffusionXL, ChatGPT open source alternative, DAO, Krita, GIMP, G'MIC & its plugins, PaintDotNet, CataclysmDDA, CataclysmBDA, Evennia, Python 3, Firefox for KDE (Developer Edition), Perl, PHP, MariaDB, lighttpd, Apache, Nginx, Themix Oomox GTK+ theme editor, Falkon, ...

Custom shell scripts, interactive REPL programming languages, some GUI programs, command aliases and dot file configurations;

?

Venera (computation "deque" project)

Original components:

RISC-V + OpenPOWER = LibreVast (tribble word-based open hardware architecture designed for daily use & tinkering developer purposes)

Tropix + OGAS = Nucleus (optimized distributed processing micro-kernel, like 'Inferno' & 'Plan9')

RedSeaFS + Parade = CLADOgram (direct-access rich media agentive filesystem & file server suite)

KDE + POSIX-compilant CDE = VUE (lightweight desktop environment with profound customization options)

CommonLisp w/ CLOS + Nim = Pan-Lisp (both low-level and high-level REPL programming language)

Existing components:

Fish, Tmux, Vim, Konsole, Flatpak, Git

KDE Plasma w/ Liquid shell alternative

Konqueror, LibreWolf

GIMP w/ G'MIC & Krita w/ G'MIC

Hexo (flat blog self-hosting web server), MariaDB, "Landchad.net" stuff

QEMU, Wine, Wine-tricks, Proton, Bottles, Lutris

Trenchbroom, Godot w/ Qodot

Kate, KDevelop, Okteta, Mousepad, Notepadqq

[...]

[lgcarl]

Wayland Holyfield

When I was a child in Mrs. Swofford’s 4th grade classroom, we learned about Arkansas.  I absolutely loved studying and learning about my state.  We explored the history of Arkansas, the development of the state, and also worked to memorize the symbols that identify it.  For example: state flower – apple blossom state bird – mockingbird state gem – diamond state grain – rice state musical…

[dhampiravidi]

my muses' favorite things...

Jayn

Food - peach ice cream & herb-crusted fish

Drink - hot coffee mixed with chocolate OR sangria

Colour - gold & where deep blue meets violet

Season - spring/summer

Scent - lavender

Instrument - violin

Time of Day - late morning

Item - anthology of fiction from her childhood

Movie - Iron Man

Naela

Food - Moroccan-style tagine (stew w/lamb, dried fruit, spices)

Drink - pretty much any fruit juice made fancy (like mimosas)

Color - periwinkle/lavender (like her/her mom's eyes)

Season - summer

Scent - fresh flowers

Music - harp OR anything by Shakira

Time of Day - late morning

Item - her sword(s) OR a worn fantasy romance paperback

Movie - The Princess Bride

Achilles

Food - banana pancakes OR spanakopita

Drink - he just wants gin, a frappuccino, an Italian soda or water

Color - sea green

Season - summer

Scent - the sea

Music - pop (like Britney Spears) & rock (like Nickelback)

Time of Day - noon

Item - a pair of earrings that his mom bought him

Movie - Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith

Jas

Food - Japanese food (sushi, curry rice, mochi)

Drink - peppermint tea

Color - bubblegum pink

Season - spring

Scent - citrus

Music - classical (piano)

Time of Day - noon

Item - her dad’s necklace (Wayland ring on a leather cord)

Movie - A Bug’s Life (her dad took her to see it when she was little)

Skadi

Food - beef pot pie (potatoes, peas, carrots) OR blueberry muffins

Drink - something w/cinnamon (rum/horchata) OR Bai Mu Dan tea

Color - forest green

Season - spring & autumn

Scent - cinnamon OR fresh pastry

Music - low woodwinds & chanting

Time of Day - morning

Item - a Jotnar song her parent taught her

Movie - the LOTR trilogy + Good Will Hunting

Oraia

Food - dolmades (Greek stuffed grape leaves), pizettes (Italian chocolate cookies w/almonds & cinnamon)

Drink - paloma (tequila, lime juice, grapefruit soda) or mojito (white rum, sugar, lime juice, soda water & mint); peach green tea

Color - N/A, though she wears a lot of blue & white

Season - any time that isn't cold

Scent - vanilla

Music - Euopop, modern rock, anything worth dancing to

Time of Day - just after sundown

Item - the knife her mom gave her

Movie - Jumping the Broom OR Disney's Hercules

Hestia

Food - Thai coconut chicken soup OR Bûche de Noël [Yule Log]

Drink - Kahlua & Chai OR Chai Tea Latte

Color - orange

Season - winter

Scent - whatever her lover & her kid smell like

Music - 90s pop (mostly dance songs)

Time of Day - early morning

Item - picture of herself & a bunch of the X-Men outside

Movie - Love Actually

Rose

Food - garlic noodles (also she's a vegan, just sayin')

Drink - bourbon OR green tea (either w/honey)

Color - ballet pink OR white

Season - spring (no solstices & few cold breezes)

Scent - the sea

Music - punk-pop (especially acoustic covers)

Time of Day - early afternoon

Item - magic locket (allows for multidimensional comm w/father)

Movie - The Prestige

Aurelia

Food - chicken vindaloo

Drink - simple stuff. Latte. Tom Collins. CBD oil ;)

Color - jade green & gold

Season - summer

Scent - dewy grass, hot cocoa, woodsy cologne

Music - classic rock (especially The Rolling Stones)

Time of Day - early evening

Item - her wand OR a souvenir scarf from Nigeria

Movie - Die Hard OR Waiting to Exhale

Rela

Food - Jogan fruit OR a simple Chinese-style stir fry (vegetarian)

Drink - doesn’t like alcohol; Royal English Breakfast Tea (w/milk)

Color - the electric blue of a holobook

Season - autumn

Scent - trees & forests in general

Music - acoustic covers & R&B

Time of Day - middle of the night

Item - her late master, Maglos Nerot's, yellow lightsaber

Movie - historical documentaries (w/o reenactments)

Eugenia

Food - carbonara (pasta)

Drink - hates alcohol; Arnold Palmer (tea & lemonade)

Color - maroon

Season - spring

Scent - dewy grass

Music - R&B + 00s pop

Time of Day - late morning

Item - she can't pick (isn't materialistic anyway)

Movie - The Bodyguard OR Legends of the Fall

Shayera

Food - chicken mole enchiladas OR falafel

Drink - Hurricane (3x rum, grenadine, OJ, simple syrup) OR a vaguely fruity thing infused w/some caffeine

Color - hot pink

Season - autumn

Scent - cocoa butter

Music - 90s rap & modern alt (Hozier)

Time of Day - noon

Item - her mace

Movie - The Equalizer OR Rush Hour

Mu Lan

Food - nkwobi (spicy Nigerian stew w/cow foot & fish stock)

Drink - ginger beer (doesn't like drinking often)

Color - crimson

Season - spring

Scent - ginger

Music - violin OR indie folk (The Civil Wars, The Lumineers...)

Time of Day - late morning

Item - petals that she preserves in her books

Movie - Miss Congeniality

Monet

Food - steak (medium) frites

Drink - sidecar cocktail (cognac, orange liqueur, lemon juice)

Color - maroon

Season - summer

Scent - apple pie

Music - 80s pop music

Time of Day - noon

Item - her black trenchcoat (which she sometimes wears as M)

Movie - The Mummy

Fantomex

Food - pretty much anything French that's 4-star quality

Drink - White Russian (vodka, coffee liqueur & cream)

Color - white, sometimes silver

Season - winter

Scent - roses

Music - rap (in French, obviously)

Time of Day - nighttime

Item - a picture Evan (his adopted son/nephew) painted for him

Movie - Casablanca OR Atomic Blonde

Renée Michele

Food - her dad's étouffée OR her mom's lotus root pork bone soup

Drink - vodka & blue raspberry Jello shots OR caramel macchiato

Color - neon colors, typically purple

Season - summer (partly for the thunderstorms)

Scent - chocolate

Music - pop-punk & grunge

Time of Day - noon

Item - her eyes

Movie - Bullet Train

Rhea Livia

Food - cheeseburger w/onions & tomato OR pork broth ramen

Drink - Baya Energy Mango Guava (premade)

Color - electric blue

Season - summer

Scent - chamomile

Music - modern/10s pop

Time of Day - noon

Item - her skateboard

Movie - Scary Movie

Cathan

Food: best described as fish resembling salmon

Drink: Faerie wine (newer the better)

Colour: black, though he says red

Season: summer

Scent: vanilla

Music: 90s pop (he’s been to mundane clubs)

Time of Day: sunset

Item: scarf gifted to him when he was twelve

Movie: Good Luck to You, Leo Grande or Moulin Rouge

[monaddecepticon]

Deductions for

NANO 😤

Points for

Estrogen counter

cargo

Using Wayland

Wayland-native terminal

On the fence about

Riced KDE

First time ricing. First time using an arch based distro too. It's mostly just a mix of dracula and catppuccin

[seattlemysterybooks]

philsp

Fall 1949 issue   

John Stephen Strange, Make My Bed Soon  (Barney Gantt),  Doubleday 1948    

Wayland Rice (Norman A. Daniels), “Murder Is a Game" 

O.B. Myers, “Video Victim"   

Jackson Hite: Murder by Improvement 

B.J. Benson, “Cry at Night"

Seattle Mystery Bookshop

[octoberdecemberwrites-blog]

PSA

THIS IS NOT OKAY

RACISM IS NOT OKAY

I CAN’T BELIEVE I REALLY HAVE TO POINT THIS OUT BUT ALRIGHT

typically I wouldn’t even give this any energy but I am t i r e d of seeing racist shit directed towards Harry/Magnus as if it’s totally fine because it’s part of some Shipping Wars bullshit 

but here’s the thing: you can literally talk shit about Magnus as a character all day, no one cares, Magnus is ultimately fictional and even if your opinion is wrong (and it is wrong because Magnus is perfect) it’s still your opinion on a fictional character so, you know, just live your life

but once you drag Harry’s IRL race into the conversation??? you are now talking about something very real, because once he steps out of character as Magnus Bane, he’s still an Asian-American male living in a stupid ass, racist ass society and as a MOC he already has ENOUGH BULLSHIT to put up with, he does not need you TAGGING HIM IN YOUR SHIPPING WARS POST WHERE YOU ALSO MAKE RACIST COMMENTS JESUS CHRIST

STOP DOING THIS

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

**Context: an Instagram post from a Jalec shipper who basically went on a rant about Matt/Dom being the true OTP or some shit and they also decided to tag the actors they mentioned l o l fuck off**

[pulpsandcomics2]

Detective Mystery Novel Magazine      Fall 1949

Make My Bed Soon by John Strange

Murder Is a Game by Wayland Rice

Video Victim by O. B. Myers

Murder by Improvement by Jackson Hite

Cry at Night by B. J. Benson

[det-loki]

poison & wine pt. one

 “I know everything you don’t want me to.”

warnings: angst, cursing

pairing: detective loki x fem reader

word count: 1,378

A/N: I’ve read and reread what seems like every detective loki fic and I’ve decided it’s my turn. I’m still relatively new with writing series, but I’m very proud of this. Enjoy, feedback is greatly appreciated! (if you find a grammar mistake, let me know)

REWRITE MASTERLIST

⌽  2  3  4  5  6

You hated the rain. It was cold and wet, always sending a bone-chilling cold through you. It reminded you of too many bad memories. Hospitals, pain, and blood. Yet all it seemed to do in Conyers was rain.

You sat across from Loki while you were toying with your fried rice inside of the vacant restaurant. This was yours and Loki’s spot, always seeming to end up here at least once a week for the past five years. You grew to hate the food but it was a constant in yours and Loki’s life and you refused to mess that up. Too many memories have been made in this shitty restaurant, good and bad.

 Neither you nor David cared much for Thanksgiving and you couldn’t be bothered to cook for just the two of you. It was too depressing, so Chinese food it was. The waitress came to your table with the check and hot tea, Loki reaching for the check before you could. Not once has he ever let you pay for a meal. Even when he could barely afford socks. 

“Happy Thanksgiving, detectives.” You wondered if she was waiting on you two to leave for her to go home to relax and celebrate the holiday. You felt bad, considering you and Loki were the only ones there, like usual.

Loki mutters a ‘thanks’ into his coffee cup before continuing, “Do you have any of the fortune-cookie things?”

The waitress looks at Loki with a smirk, “My boss told me cops don’t like fortune cookies.” Classic. 

David looks down at the zodiac placemat, “What year were you born? Are you a dragon, or a snake, a horse, or a sheep?”

“I’m a monkey.” The waitress ogled David who was barely paying attention to her. You knew he would never act on her advances, he was too caught up in whatever the two of you were. Lovers, roommates, co-workers, family. He was everything to you and vice versa. 

Both you and Loki look down to read, Loki responds, “Oh, you’re a monkey. You’re very intelligent. You have the ability to influence people. Think maybe you could influence your boss to lower the check a little bit?” He was flirting. Sometimes you thought that he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. It’s how he charmed you all those years ago. Both of you young and dumb; too young to know any better or any different.

The waitress brings you out of your head, “No, I cannot. My boss is a rooster.”

Again, both you and Loki look down to inspect as the waitress walks away. Selfish and eccentric. Nice, reminds me of Captain O’Malley.

Loki looks at you with a genuine smile before asking, “What’s your zodiac? I forget.” You loved it when he smiled, he didn’t do it enough. You couldn’t really blame him though, neither did you. 

“Well, considering it’s tattooed on your hand, I feel like you should remember. I’m a horse also a cancer, whichever way you want to look at it.” He had gotten the tattoos a month after it.

Loki laughs and looks down again, “Energetic, passionate, and aspirant. I’d say that’s pretty accurate for you.”

You laugh, “Yeah, what’s yours?” You already knew the answer, it was tattooed into your skin years ago along with two other zodiac symbols next to it. Never allowing you to abandon Conyers or David. You were forever tied to it all, inked permanently.

Loki looks at you, his eyes teasing, “I’m gonna give you the same line. Considering it’s tattooed on your collarbone, I feel like you should remember.”

Before you could respond, both yours and Loki’s phones interrupt with a call. Two missing girls, fuck.

The rain is coming down in sheets as you step out of Loki’s car. You pull your raincoat tighter as you follow David to the RV that was called in surrounded by cops at the edge of the woods.

You take your radio out of your pocket, “13-40 and 13-43 engaging with the suspect. Be advised.”

You creep along with Loki towards the RV as the driver revs the engine, tail lights flashing red against you. The RV violently backs up, Loki instructing everyone to not shoot. The driver changes gears, driving forward and slamming into a tree. You advance forward, gun in hand along with a flashlight. Arriving at the door of the RV, Loki takes your flashlight, “Stay here, keep watch.”

Loki entered the vehicle while you and other officers stood by, waiting. The door opens violently, Loki throwing the suspect out. The man stumbles as Loki takes hold of his jacket, dragging him further into the woods. You followed silently, letting David handle him. He never was gentle with cases when children were involved.

Loki yelled at the man with no response, only a blank stare. David shoved him forward, falling at your feet, “What the fuck is this guy on?”

 You take his forearm and haul him to his feet, instructing an officer to take him to the station while David called out for someone to call PSP. This case was already bad. Fear, and pain already settling into your bones. 

You sat in the interrogation room while Loki had the suspect, Alex Jones, backed against a corner. The interrogation had been going on for 2 hours and nothing useful has been said and Loki was getting impatient. You could see it in the way he squinted his eyes and the tension in his shoulders. He needed a break before he exploded.

“Detective, let me try. Take a break.” Loki looks over his shoulder at you, frustrated. He knew you were right but he didn’t want to give up. With a hard sigh, he left the room. Alex visibly relaxed as Loki left.

You had your suspicions about Alex’s cognitive abilities by the way he was speaking, you wouldn’t be able to confirm until the psychologist arrived. Your best bet was to speak as if you were speaking to a child, “Alex, would you like to sit down with me?”

Alex nodded his head, slowly shuffling towards the chair sat across from you. He visibly trembled as he sat down.

“Alex, is it okay with you if I ask you some questions?”

Alex only nodded, “What were you doing today with the RV?”

Alex speaks softly, voice cracking, “Just driving.”

You sigh, “Yeah, I like drives. Was today a special day to drive?” You did not like drives, you preferred not to. David had always been the driver between the two of you. 

Alex shakes his head no. You couldn’t help but feel bad for the boy. He had no idea what was going on, however, you quickly shoved that thought down, he was a suspect in the case of two missing little girls.

“Okay Alex, I’m going to step out for a minute to give you a break, I know this is all different and scary. Let me know if you need anything.” With that, you left the room. You turned towards the interrogation viewing room door where you knew Loki already was watching your questioning.

As soon as you step foot in the room, Loki snaps at you, “What was that? You were too soft, we won’t get anywhere with that.”

You scoff. David was good at his job but he had a habit of going too far, “No, I wasn’t. You scaring him speechless isn’t going to get us anywhere either. Let me do my job the way I need to and I’ll let you do yours.”

Loki knew you were right so instead of protesting, he went to go talk to the forensics team, leaving you alone in the room with your thoughts. This case was going to be bad for the both of you, you already knew that. You needed to keep your head on straight and keep composure, if you didn’t, this case was going to consume and eat you alive. It was bound to happen, your good luck as partners was going to run out one day and you hoped this case wasn’t it. 

You walk back to your desk in hopes to find David when you look outside to see it’s still raining. Stupid fucking rain. 

Taglist: @lexie-wayland  @whew-oh-em-gee​ @winterlavenderskysworld​ @buck-this-nasty @heeyirenee 

[desimonewayland]

New work from Studio DeSimone-Wayland / Rice Fields on Bali

[lindsaywesker]

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day. Welcome to the weekend!

Yesterday, I had to check my calendar to see if April 1st had rolled around again. The BBC’s diversity chief has claimed Idris Elba's TV detective Luther “isn't black enough to be real” because “he doesn't have any black friends and doesn't eat any Caribbean food”.

Miranda Wayland said the hit crime drama was only superficially diverse and that corporation bosses are now looking to portray minority groups in a more convincing and rounded way. She said, “When [Luther] first came out everybody loved the fact that Idris Elba was in there; a really strong, black character lead. We all fell in love with him. Who didn't, right? But after you got into about the second series you got kind of like, OK, he doesn't have any black friends, he doesn't eat any Caribbean food; this doesn't feel authentic.” I see. So, in order to be ‘authentic’, black people must have black friends and eat rice ’n’ peas? (We must assume the members of Luther’s family are black, so he probably has a lot of black people in his life!) What’s going to happen now? Is the white writer of ‘Luther’ going to be asked to create some new black characters? As The Trouble sits watching ‘Stranger Things’, scoffing down duck’s liver pate (on expensive crackers) and sipping Smirnoff and lemonade, I dare anyone to tell her she’s not ‘authentic’! She’s quite happy eating ackee and saltfish but she enjoys other cuisine too! Am I authentically English? Should I be singing ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown’ round the old Joanna, instead of listening to the new Jah Cure single? Should I be eating pie and mash instead of enjoying another plate of oxtail and butter bean stew? Blimey, maybe I should alter the way I live? After all, all white people are the same and all black people are the same.

The weather wasn’t great but the 61-year-old man still went for his three-mile walk. My life is a bit busy at the moment, so I get the miles in when I can. Yesterday, The New York Times ran the following story, “People who exercise regularly are much less likely to be hospitalized, and to die, from Covid-19 than those who are sedentary, a new study suggests.” Been saying this for ages!

Look forward to your company tomorrow afternoon at 1.00 pm for ‘The A-Z Of Mi-Soul Music’. The Letter A (Pt.7).

Have a fabulous and funky Friday! I love you all. And, remember, don’t just read my words, buy one of my books, read it and review it! And, when Lockdown is over, I promise I will come and read to you!

[clacpybara]

having used manjaro for a while, i'm now back to arch. this time, for a somewhat minimalistic experience.

- removed grub in favor of efistub. if you follow the wiki, maybe you'll need to change PARTUUID to UUID so it works

- no display manager, just setup getty to autologin. it still requires a password.

- using sway as window manager. very nice. i still use a load of xorg stuff, though.

- upon login on tty1 it gets me to sway automatically. this does not require any additional packages, just some ~/.profile configuration

- still haven't figured out how to screen share or take screenshots. wayland stuff.

- i've lost most of my dotfiles because cp * does not copy hidden files :(

- pretty monochromatic layout, everything is black and cyan. no two tones for the colors, except white/gray/black. made a theme using oomox. numix is greate for a boxy look. no rounded corners, no gradients. everything looks like a terminal

- no window decorations, just a tiny border around it. and oh yes, gaps, of course

sad thing is that i haven't found a way to replace unclutter on wayland.

the rice continues

[theiciantales]

Hearth 1: Zomith

She felt the sweat on her brow as she hammered away on the breastplate. The workshop was sweltering with both the active forge and the coastal humidity that often visited the city of Wayland which sat on the southern coast of the continent. The family business had been booming ever since her mom joined up with a caravan headed for the city of Turley a couple months back, so she had taken some time off from her guard duties to help her dad and younger siblings keep up. Zomith stretched the tight muscles in her back while she reminisced. The workshop smelled of fire and oil, leather and steel, the smells of her childhood… well that and the dirt in the small yard they had where her mother trained her. She was honestly glad that she was six years older than Iza because her parents realized that having a toddler able to wonder around hot metal and sharp weapons wasn’t a great idea. Her jade skin still had plenty of burns from her early misadventures. It certainly helped her learn quickly to always assume metal was hot in the workshop until you prove otherwise. The day was winding down and the sunset filtered through the doors of the workshop, highlighting the neatly organized racks of tools, drafting benches, and three anvils. Zomith tapped a nail against one of her tusks while she considered if it would be worth it to finish the piece tonight or not, especially because the client wouldn’t even be by to pick it up for a couple days, and once she started on the filigree, she wouldn’t be able to stop until it was done. The smell of a spicy fish stew cut through the fumes of the shop.

“Zomy! Time for dinner!” 

Her dad had been calling her that for as long as she could remember. He was a large human with rosy cheeks and lots of muscle hiding under a layer of fat. He was also the main cook in the family, with a bevy of family recipes that ranged from light desserts to hearty stews that could fuel an army. He always had just the meal after a long day of getting her ass kicked by mom. She grabbed one of the spare towels they kept by the door and wiped off the sweat before tying her hair back up in a small bun. The cacophony from the kitchen was nothing compared to that of the forge, even so she still braced herself for the wall of sound. The kitchen was filled with both the din of shouted conversation and the wondrous smell of stew, rice, and grilled peaches. Her spot at the table already had a large portion, and all five of her siblings shouted in greeting. That was all the warning she had before she was ambushed by a swarm of the gremlins, each one latched onto a different limb, but she stood tall against the mass of sibling. Her dad’s belly laugh boomed through the home, shortly followed by squeals and laughter of his children.

(Image by Ōhashi Hiroshi)