yuuago | Entries tagged with current events and news

* The New Zealand Islamic Information Centre is running a campaign via Launchgood to raise funds for the victims of the Christchurch attack.

* There is also a different campaign run by NZ Council of Victim Support, via NZ-based crowdfunding site Givealittle. The site seems to be having issues right now, probably because of so many people accessing it. [Edit] Seems to be working fine now.

* Victim Support has opened an additional campaign at Everyday Hero on account of the overload/timeouts at Givealitte. (Details)

If any of you know of any others to take note of, let me know. I'll add them to the list. I'm looking mainly for NZ-based organizations; I figure they'd be the most effective.

So, it looks like the final result of the Australian marriage equality postal vote is Yes. Congratulations, southern cousins!

Of course, this ain't the end, but it's a step, right? Even though (as I understand) it isn't legally binding, it's hard to argue with 61%. That's a pretty solid majority.

I'm acquainted with some people who were pretty concerned about what the result would be, so I'm glad it turned out for the positive.

It was nice to hear some good news today.

To my southern neighbours: I offer my condolences.

I'm not going to be talking about the US election much beyond this brief post. There's a lot of that on the internet already. But do know that you guys have my support. If you want to talk about anything else to get your mind off it, hit me up.

Good luck with everything.

I'm going to have to turn down any and all marriage proposals, though. Sorry about that.

Crossposts: http://yuuago.livejournal.com/1334948.html

( Current/ongoing events stuff )

Crossposts: http://yuuago.livejournal.com/1331302.html

☆ Fascinating news! Sir John Franklin's ship, the HMS Terror, has been rediscovered in Nunavut. *_* So, that's two major discoveries from this failed expedition, in a very short period of time (the earlier was the HMS Erebus, rediscovered two years ago). It's really cool how Inuit oral history has been vital in finding this stuff. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by stories about the Franklin expedition, so I'm really looking forward to reading more about this when more information becomes available. (Though I do find it funny how in school, we learned so much about failed Northwest Passage expeditions, especially Franklin and Hudson, but the first expedition to actually succeed in completing the journey was never mentioned. MAN, THAT ROALD AMUNDSEN, WHAT A GUY. Ahem.)

☆ I'm finally able to play PokeGo again. HOORAY. Don't have the Buddy update yet, but that's all right. It was just nice to play it again. Didn't catch anything interesting tonight, but I did hatch... a Zubat. Shhhh, it has high CP and awesomely balanced attack+defence and Blanche was Very Impressed with it. I'm going to keep it and name it something cliche and vampire-y.

☆ My neighbourhood is kind of weird at night. Lately it's been dark at around 8, and by 8:30 it's pitch black, and because it's kind of chilly out, nobody goes out walking, unless they have a dog with them. But for the most part, the small sidestreets are empty. The lamps are widely-spaced, so there are lots of parts where it's almost entirely dark. It just gives off this eerie, weird feeling. ...Also, somebody had their Christmas lights on. What. Though, er, they were orange, so maybe they were meant to be Halloween lights. In which case - mate, you're still a month early. I don't mind starting Halloween a little ahead of the game, but think of your electrical bill, dude.

Crossposts: http://yuuago.livejournal.com/1323005.html

✿ This weekend was all right, but not what I would usually prefer. Rain kept me home on Saturday, and smoke kept me home on Sunday. The forest fire smoke wasn't as bad as it was around the beginning of the month, but we're still getting a lot blowing in from the north of the province and east. The fire problem is province-wide, but in Saskatchewan it's even worse, and over 4750km has burned so far. The Red Cross hasn't put out an official call for donations at this time, but 13,000 evacuees - that's a pretty damn big number for them to deal with.

✿ ... As for myself, my area is unaffected at this time, aside from the smoke that I mentioned before. It's not so bad if you stay inside, but that sure is a bummer. And while I'm healthy, not everyone is, and this stuff could affect some other people pretty badly.

✿ Wow, I totally did not intend to start this entry off on a downer note. I guess this stuff has just been on my mind a lot lately.

✿ Anyway! In completely unrelated news, I have an account on Duolingo, username is yuuago as always. If any of you want to add me there, go ahead. Right now I'm only working on Norwegian, though I might pick up another language eventually (though I'm not sure what). I've been going through the lessons very slowly; I don't want to run out of them. And taking in too much all at once tends to be a little overwhelming and I usually forget things easily when I do that. Anyway, so far it seems to be pretty useful for drills, though I don't know how useful it will be for anything else. The upside is that it gets me in the mood to work on Norwegian, and that's the important part.

Crossposts: http://yuuago.livejournal.com/1232964.html

My mind has been flipping from subject to subject all day, and now I can't really focus on just one thing. I'm finding it hard to concentrate. It's likely to do with the fact that the first thing I read when I woke up was about the bombing and shootings in Oslo, and I haven't really been able to think about anything else all day.

Normally I don't feel so affected by things that happen in the news, but it's more troubling when it happens near someone you know. I suppose it's like this: It's one thing to read about crime happening all the time in the local paper. But if something like that happens to a neighbour or to a friend, it feels different, and one is more affected by it. Perhaps that isn't right, but that is how it is, at least for me.

Spent much of the morning worrying about my friend in Oslo. But I managed to get in contact with her, and she's fine. Perfectly fine. I figured she would be, but there was the possibility -- well, anyway. I'm just glad she's okay. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the victims of this. Man, it's just awful.

Now I hear of certain goings-on, and those certain things being defended. It makes me very angry. Some things are just not appropriate. Not at all. I wish people would realize that.

I don't understand people. At all.

Current Music: Folque - Harpa

Oh gods I'm so tired. BUT BEFORE BED

✿ It is WAY too freaking warm out. I cannot handre.

✿ I intended to do work all night, but instead ended up eating lots of ice cream and messing around on the internet. Isn't that how life goes? 8D

✿ I was reading yesterday's paper and apparently three fires have been intentionally lit somewhere in my general area all in this week. UHHH GUYS, I'M KINDA' SCARED. Considering I pretty much live in a matchbox, fire is something that really scares me. Rrrgh.

✿ The Baltic Index is finally revamped. WOOHOO. I am a winner. +9000 hours, ten .txt files and a lot of HTML later... we get this. I still need to put in the smaller changes, but there is no rush for that.

✿ Hey

mattyroh; I got your card! Ahhh you are just way too sweet. <3 It really brightened up my day.

✿ Speaking of which, reminder, if anyone wants a letter from me, just let me know. <3

✿ I AM. SO. TIRED. sdlkfjdfd [/goes to bed] [/except not]

✿ Also, eew, I really do not like lj's new tag input drop-down thing... the way it was before was better, I think.

Current Music: Flor-de-Lis - Todas as Ruas do Amor

July 15th: Argentina legalises same-sex marriage

Reading this after waking up this morning made me very happy. Even though there are bad things going on in the world, there is still positive change happening. It's good news. Hopefully more countries in Latin America (and the rest of the world) will follow suit.

On a less political note, this is neat:

18th-century ship found at Trade Centre site

It's so cool how things like that can pop up in unexpected places. I don't hear about it happening in America as much, so that's kind of different.

...As for myself, I have been doing absolutely nothing interesting lately. Well, that's not entirely true. I've been studying French a bit more. I'm still extremely bad at it, but at least I'm getting better at hearing spoken French and identifying what is being said. I can put together some simple sentences too... I mean it's all extremely basic, but considering for the most part my knowledge consists only of "Je ne parle pas francais", I think it's a little bit of an improvement. :|

Okay, I've been watching a lot of movies too, recently. Partly it's because I've decided I will use this method to relax myself, but it's also because mum sent me a bunch of dvds for my birthday, so I've been going through them. It's... nice. Nice to just sit and watch something and work on my knitting during that, and not be concerned about communicating with people. "Me" time. It's good. I should spend time unplugged more often, I think. Argh.

Current Music: Leevi and the Leavings - Toiveunta

☆ It's been storming so damn much lately, I don't even get it. Not just storming, but flooding as a result of the storms. It's pretty damn bad in some parts of Saskatoon; same for elsewhere in the province - man, when the Globe and Mail bothers to report on it, that's when you know that the situation is bad. There have also been problems with tornadoes touching down in Saskatchewan. It's all kind of freaky, and it really makes me miss Fort McMurray's extreme-but-stable weather. What the hell is going on, Saskatchewan?

☆ School is driving me insane. I've been kind of distant from a lot of people, I think, and that's the reason. Haa, what else is new, really. Same old thing, that.

☆ On the upside, doing some reading has at least been giving me some time to calm down. It's especially good that I can talk about it with Bice, even though usually it's just "what part are you at, and wasn't such-and-such scene awesome", haa. I don't know, it's just.. it's good.

☆ I've started working on French again. Just Pimsleur audio lessons, usually while indexing or doing something else. I don't know if I'll actually learn anything from it; I'm not much of an audio learner, and the lessons I've been going through so far are quite basic. On the other hand, they have helped me realize that my French pronunciation is absolutely awful, and always has been. My audio comprehension has never been good, either... so maybe it will help a bit, despite not being my preferred medium. We'll see.

☆ My two teams are out of the World Cup and now I have absolutely no idea who to cheer for. :| I guess I'll go with Uruguay, because that's who Odie's cheering for, but I don't know if they can do it, man.

☆ Nordic Indexing is going well. Parts 1-13 are done; now going through past-parts, which is a bit of a headache. It goes quickly, though. I like looking at the numbers and seeing changes in trends. It's kind of cool to see the rough change in popularity of some characters over time, and discrepancies in how many prompts a character receives compared to how many fills are written involving that character. For example, Sweden has more filled-requests than Denmark does, and a higher percentage of filled requests/total (39% vs 31%). But Denmark became more popular than Sweden in a relatively short period of time, despite having very little page-time; he has more requests, and is more frequently requested. On the other hand, Finland has fewer prompts and fills than either of those two, but has a higher percentage of filled requests (42%).

... Though this doesn't account for change in trends over time, just overall numbers. And I don't know what it might mean aside from "Nordics fans really, really like Denmark".

Current Music: Alexander Rybak - Suomi

Sonoma County CA separates elderly gay couple and sells their home without their consent

Frankly, I find it terrifying that things like this can still happen.

I'd comment more, but I'm too full of rage to really form coherent sentences right now. I'll just say this: This is the 21st century, and things like this shouldn't happen. But they do happen, as we see here.

I'd appreciate it if y'all spread the link around your FLists. I'll be on the lookout for more sources - this one was written only today, so maybe by Monday we'll have some better ones. I'll be updating this entry as I come across more. By the way, the linked article contains information at the bottom regarding contacting the county's paper, Press Democrat (owned by the New York Times), to do reporting on the issue. So far they have not reported on it.

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The following are basically the same as above, just alternates:
The report at NCLR
The report at ONTD_P

Polish leader and 96 others dead in jet crash

I want to say something about this, but I can't find the right words - but there is the run-down for anyone who hadn't heard about it yet. My deepest sympathies go to the families of those persons, and also to the people of Poland.

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It snowed yesterday. I opened the blinds, swore, then immediately closed them. It is April. I think that Winter didn't get the memo.

I have been busy. I am frustrated. School is driving me crazy.

If anyone needs to contact me in the next little while, commenting on my journal is the best way to do it. I won't be on messengers much.

Current Music: Treaty of Paris - Tired all the Time

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yuuago

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Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.
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