Suddenly Slime Mold

I was reading Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky, enjoying the octopus diplomacy and the excellent human-spider body language translation science when suddenly ( cut for horror spoilers )

tl;dr: I scared myself before bed with unexpected horror and now I'm underslept and every annoying customer is the antichrist. (NO THEY ARE, THEY ARE THE ANTICHRIST.)

Yeah, this entry was going to be all about how much better I'm coping with shit. I spent an entire consult with my new doctor convincing her how much better I'm coping now, and she said that it didn't sound like a quality of life she would call coping. And now I'm on 100mg of desvenlafaxine and still trying to convince people of how well I'm coping. (I am coping! But not, as she said, finding much joy in life right now.)

Ugh. When my therapist asked if I wanted to do some breathing/relaxation exercises with her, the word 'relaxation' made me cry. But I'm coping.

( Medical stuffs )

ENOUGH OF THIS MISERABLE BULLSHIT.

Linkspam (which has been accumulating for a while, oops)
- Via marthawells, Murderbot fanart:
Murderbot fanart! by FaithErinHicks

- Via network, this very strange, trippy essay about the weirdness of John Le Carre's women, which very much sums up the way I relate to his books:
Like many of John Le Carré’s women, she has a creepy energy that I can only describe as “sex-mother".

- From First Dog on the Moon (at the Guardian):
Look life is really tough, even when it isn’t. You’re allowed to feel shit
Remember, capitalism is working perfectly. You're supposed to be exhausted and frightened you'll lose your job. If you're worrying about the rent, you're not worrying about firing the billionaires into the sun where they belong.

- From network (and I didn't note down from whom, sorry!):
Australian Gothic: from Hanging Rock to Nick Cave and Kylie, this genre explores our dark side

- From scans_daily, the Corsair showed up in the IDW Doctor Who comics. I always love it when characters meet other incarnations of the Doctor, so this is very much my cup of tea.
scans_daily had a link to the original mention of the Corsair in the Eleventh Doctor episode, and some scans:
Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #10 - The Doctor meets an old friend
And some noble soul on fail_fandomanon collected a whole lot of scans together:
So, Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor #9 introduced the Corsair to the comics

- Via yuuago
cChinese Language Learning Apps and Games
Reviews of Chinese/Mandarin language apps and games

- Via the amazing stoush this video caused on my extremely staid crochet group on Facebook. (I am still laughing at the incredible outrage):
How to Crochet a Vulva Tea Cosie
The Vulva Tea Cosie combines the traditions of sharing tea and crochet, with a vulva, in a brazen celebration of womanhood.
(Still laughing.)

- Via used_songs who introduced me to Dance Your PhD (which is the most best and delightful thing I have come across in a while):
2014 winner: Plant-soil feedbacks after severe tornado damage - Uma Nagendra
2016 winner: A novel polymeric prosthetic heart valve: design, manufacture, and testing - Jacob Brubert
2018 finalist: Dark energy and dark matter via probabilistic data analysis by Alex Malz
(This one pretty much sums up my mental state every time I watch Sapphire and Steel, to be honest. Just baffled and deeply emotional about some very cheap special effects.)

Well, having blown your minds with scientific interpretive dance, I shall sign off. Good day.