Nicky
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shanaqui.bsky.social
Nicky
@shanaqui.bsky.social
130 followers 49 following 1.3K posts
36-year-old reader, gamer, self-employed worker, frequent student. Ace, enby, Welsh, reluctant collector of anxiety disorders. They/them.

I do work for Beeminder, Postcrossing and Taskratchet, but this is a personal account.
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shanaqui.bsky.social
Review - The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks, by Daniel Konstanski: this was really fascinating, and made me think very highly of Lego as a company. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").

Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/12/08/r...

#booksky 💙📚
Review – The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks
Daniel Konstanski’s The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks digs into a lot of the things that make LEGO tick: the nuts and bolts of how the bricks work (like their “clutch power”) as well…
breathesbooks.com
December 8, 2025 at 5:45 PM
shanaqui.bsky.social
Replying "Nice!" to a post in which I talk about losing my pet (even if there is other content) comes off as being an incredible jerk, just FYI folks.
December 8, 2025 at 1:59 PM
shanaqui.bsky.social
Review - Nineteenth-Century Fashion in Detail, by Lucy Johnston: lots of fascinating garments and explanations, marred slightly by not including full images of the complete garments. Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").

Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/12/08/r...

#booksky 💙📚
Review – Nineteenth-Century Fashion in Detail
Nineteenth-Century Fashion in Detail is very much what it says on the tin, discussing the fashions of the nineteenth century through the V&A’s collection, in a series of themed chapters t…
breathesbooks.com
December 8, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Nicky
flawedideal.bsky.social
i like this pose. more scoop
#hualian #tgcf
December 7, 2025 at 8:27 PM
shanaqui.bsky.social
Review - The Wages of Sin, by Kaite Welsh: this wasn't quite for me due to many references to rape, but it's an interesting historical mystery based around the first women who studied medicine in Victorian Britain. Rating: 3/5 ("liked it").
Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/12/07/r...

#booksky 💙📚
Review – The Wages of Sin
Kaite Welsh’s The Wages of Sin is historical fiction, set in Edinburgh with one of the first groups of women to study for a medical degree there. The main character, Sarah, is in disgrace &#8…
breathesbooks.com
December 7, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Reposted by Nicky
davidgerard.co.uk
the fucking Calibre e-book manager has gone AI slop

calibre-ebook.com/whats-new
New features Allow asking AI questions about any book in your calibre library. Right click the "View" button and choose "Discuss selected book(s) with AI" AI: Allow asking AI what book to read next by right clicking on a book and using the "Similar books" menu AI: Add a new backend for "LM Studio" which allows running various AI models locally
December 5, 2025 at 11:24 PM
shanaqui.bsky.social
Review - Into the Dark, by Jordan L. Hawk: this one was really creepy to me, and I had to read it pretty much in one go! Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").

Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/12/07/r...

#booksky 💙📚
Review – Into the Dark
Oof, Jordan L. Hawk’s Into the Dark genuinely creeped me out in a way the previous two books didn’t really. It was some of the details, I think, and the fact that the haunting partly ma…
breathesbooks.com
December 7, 2025 at 10:53 AM
shanaqui.bsky.social
Thank you, Dad, for just buying it and not asking questions when my Etsy got blocked due to moving (yeah that's a thing). I'm glad I didn't have to explain #SVSSS to him because he's fundamentally uncurious unless someone WANTS to tell.

I still didn't ask him to get the "Cumplane" stickers though.
ehlyah.bsky.social Ehlyah @ehlyah.bsky.social · 2d
My very own Bingpup was hiding in my advent calendar! #svsss
A Bingpup shaped cushion
December 7, 2025 at 12:17 AM
shanaqui.bsky.social
Review - Love in the Palm of His Hand, vol 1, by Rinteku: this is a really cute manga, and I love the way it tries to visually represent sign language and alternate types of communication. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").

Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/12/06/r...

#booksky 💙📚
Review – Love in the Palm of His Hand, vol 1
Rinteku’s Love in the Palm of His Hand is a really cute manga focusing on a friendship (and burgeoning romance) between Keito and Fujinaga, a Deaf student and a hearing student who is also an…
breathesbooks.com
December 6, 2025 at 10:31 PM
Reposted by Nicky
gyro.bsky.social
I fucking love memes you can understand through the language barrier, holy shit
December 6, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by Nicky
sadisticss.bsky.social
Every man dreams of being carried in the arms of his beloved husband😋
#TGCF #hualian
December 6, 2025 at 10:10 AM
Reposted by Nicky
mossymage.bsky.social
some soft and sweet kissing to end the night <3
#hualian #tgcf
Digital sketch of Hualian fromthe novel Tian Guan Ci Fu naked and kissing softly. Hua Cheng is laying back, propped on his elbows with a hand on Xie Lian’s waist, his hair is braided and falling down his back. Xie Lian is kneeling over him, one hand on Hua Cheng’s chest, the other supporting his weight. He’s turned so his back and butt are facing the viewer.
December 6, 2025 at 7:59 AM
shanaqui.bsky.social
Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post:

A subdued weekend due to loss of a pet, but I have a library book to share, plus the usual roundup of reviews posted and the books I've been reading.

breathesbooks.com/2025/12/06/s...

#booksky 💙📚
Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post
Sadly, this week one of my rabbits died (RIP Hulk), so I’m not feeling super chipper. I’ll get to replies when I can, but it might not be over the weekend. Sorry folks. Books acquired t…
breathesbooks.com
December 6, 2025 at 12:59 PM
shanaqui.bsky.social
So... y'all do know that advocating exposure therapy to "treat" misophonia is basically just torture, and would make it worse, yes?
December 6, 2025 at 10:20 AM
shanaqui.bsky.social
It is certainly possible that I just spent... a while putting all ghost Focumon into my training centre and making it #TGCF themed...

(Pst, if you want a Pokemon-ish "game" for task management and focusing, I'm having fun with Focumon and this is my invite link: www.focumon.com/trainers/sha...)
A screenshot from Focumon, a Pokemon-like browser site for gamifying focusing/task management. The image has a grassy background with tombstones, with a number of Focumon ranged beside an avatar in red. Below, an NPC called "Hua Cheng" says: "What matters is you, not the state of you." There's a title below, "Ghost City", and a description which is another Hua Cheng quote: "I might not be able to decide whether the road is easy or not, but whether I walk it is entirely up to me." Below that is a button for starting a focus session.
December 6, 2025 at 1:59 AM
Reposted by Nicky
bextraordinary.bsky.social
♥️
To my friends from LiveJournal I still think about you Wonder if you finally quit, Do you still speak to your mom? I remember when you went to Japan How you swore you'd never forgive him. I can't remember to take my meds but I remember you wanted to live on a houseboat. It's a strange intimacy, all of us unspooling across decades of internet space Like balls of yarn leaving a trail behind us of everywhere and everyone we've ever been I hope you got your houseboat. I hope you got everything. -Hayley DeRoche
December 5, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Nicky
sunyidean.com
This is annoying me so much. I cannot believe the BBC is making me defend James Daunt, but this article title is some absolute clickbait bullshit.

"As a bookseller, we sell what publishers publish, but I can say that instinctively that is something that we would recoil [from]," he said.
We would sell books by Al, says Waterstones boss PA Waterstones would stock books created using artificial intelligence, the company's boss has said, as long as they were clearly labelled, and if customers wanted them. However, James Daunt, a veteran of the bookselling industry, said he personally did not expect that to happen. "There's a huge proliferation of Al generated content and most of it are not books that we should be selling," he said. But it would be "up to the reader" In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC's Big Boss Interview podcast, Daunt said while Waterstones uses Al for logistics they currently try to keep Al generated content out of the shops. "As a bookseller, we sell what publishers publish, but I can say that instinctively that is something that we would recoil [from]," he said. "Who's to know? [Technology firms] are spending trillions and trillions on Al and maybe it's going to produce the next War and Peace. "And if people want to read that book, Al-generated or not, we will be selling it - as long as it doesn't pretend to [be] something that it isn't. "We as booksellers would certainly naturally and instinctively disdain it," Daunt said. Readers value a connection with the author "that does require a real person" he added. Any Al-generated book would always be clearly labelled as such.
December 5, 2025 at 9:30 AM
shanaqui.bsky.social
Posted holiday wishes post on Dreamwidth: holiday-wishes.dreamwidth.org/178235.html

Mostly fic/art and rec requests (inc #SVSSS #TGCF and #MDZS; #liushen, #huaqing and #wangxian respectively), but also requests for book recs and a link to my Amazon wishlist because reading is how I deal with grief.
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holiday-wishes.dreamwidth.org
December 5, 2025 at 10:45 AM
shanaqui.bsky.social
Review - One Night in Hartswood, by Emma Denny: this wasn't awful, but it somehow didn't convince either. I didn't love the main characters and I was eh about the dramatic denouement. Rating: 2/5 ("it was okay").

Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/12/05/r...

#booksky 💙📚
Review – One Night in Hartswood
Emma Denny’s One Night in Hartswood was sadly just… okay. It’s ostensibly historical fiction, but it could equally have been fantasy; that part is really just set-dressing for a m…
breathesbooks.com
December 5, 2025 at 9:33 AM
shanaqui.bsky.social
Review - Death of a Naturalist, by Seamus Heaney: a really good collection with some of my favourite Heaney poems. Rating: 4/5 ("really liked it").

Full review: breathesbooks.com/2025/12/05/r...

#booksky 💙📚
Review – Death of a Naturalist
Seamus Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist collection contains some of the poems I know best, including my favourite, ‘Mid-Term Break’, the final line of which is always a perfect punc…
breathesbooks.com
December 5, 2025 at 1:03 AM
shanaqui.bsky.social
Tangentially, the assumption that having rich parents means a child is being taken care of and provided for is false.

As so many of these assumptions are.
bookjockeyalex.bsky.social Alex Brown 🇵🇸 (they/them) @bookjockeyalex.bsky.social · 4d
I don't care if a non-disabled person accesses a disability accommodation for the same reason I don't care if a child whose parents are rich gets free lunch at school. We don't need to means test being a kind person. I have better things to do with my time than be a cop over social services.
December 4, 2025 at 8:32 PM
shanaqui.bsky.social
Well, I have cried while cleaning the bathroom and then again while emptying the dishwasher, for some reason, and now my head hurts like it's in a vice.
December 4, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by Nicky
broadwaybabyto.bsky.social
You can’t tell if someone is disabled just by looking at them.

There’s no such thing as the “genuinely disabled”.

You are not entitled to a person’s entire medical history just so you can decide whether to believe them or not.

People are not faking disability, most are trying to fake being well.
December 4, 2025 at 5:52 AM
shanaqui.bsky.social
CN pet death.

Friends may wish to know that this morning we took Hulk to the vet for the last time and said goodbye.

CN pet death.
December 4, 2025 at 10:30 AM