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NYC subway challenge

Inspired by seeing this old article on Hacker News, here's a challenge for you: In the (current) NYC subway system, find two stops A and B such that to get from A to B, you need to take 4 trains. (This isn't 1980 anymore; I'm pretty certain there aren't any pairs requiring 5 trains.) We can set out several difficulty levels:

1. Ultra-easy version: There just has to be some time of day / day of the week at which it works.
2. Easy version: It has to work on the normal subway schedule (meaning, weekday, not late-night, not rush hour, no peak-direction-only services, no other special stuff, the Times square / Bryant Park transfer is open).
3. Full version: It has to work no matter the time of day or day of the week.

We assume that the subways are in fact running as scheduled -- no reroutes or service reductions. You have to stay inside the subway system, inside the fare gates; out-of-system transfers are not allowed even if they're free, and if you want to turn around, you have to do it at a station where that's possible.

(Note: I'm not a subway expert, so I'm relying on the maps (including their legends and info) to be essentially accurate here. I'm aware that there's some more info that's not on the maps, but so far, I've yet to see anything relevant to the challenge, so I'm just going to hope there's truly nothing!)

Can you find how to do it?
( Answers in the cut )

Nonstandard subnational flag emoji: An answer!

So, remember this?

Well, I finally found out where it's coming from! What's going on here is that these flags are included in my system's emoji font, which is from Google's Noto Emoji family. And the version of this font included with Debian and Ubuntu, at least, includes these nonstandard flags. Which ones? Well, the files for them are right here! And yup, it's exactly the ones I said.

So yay, that's that question answered!

I'm in love with a goddess <3

The last time I saw SJ Tucker perform live, so many things about my life were different.

Last time I saw her live was in 20176, at New York Faerie Fest (an event I'd really love to get back to someday, and I'm kinda bummed the timing just never works out, but end of the school year is _hard_ with burnout). I hadn't realized it was that far back --I did some checking of dates and the like, because sometimes it is very nice to have your entire history stored online¹ in an easy-to-access format.

So wow, I can add to the "things that were different last time I saw my favourite artist perform live" that I was technically still employed by the fucking private school. It wasn't just "before the weekend that Everything Changed", it was a whole year earlier than that.

The last time I saw s00j perform live, I was still dating her ex². :P

And I wasn't dating 60% of my current partners. I was still dating Sparr. I was living not in nBs or DanzaHausa but in ARSES. I did not yet have a therapist, which means Jenn is gonna get a hell of an infodump next week because have I mentioned s00j to her before? not sure!

But anyways, the me who was seeing her tonight was not the same as the me who saw her last, and yet and yet and yet. I didn't cry through the entire show, which is good (there wasn't a space for me to dance, so I couldn't manifest proper my own power to counter hers). I did cry uncontrollably through Little Bird and Wonders, which is good.

She was double-teaming with Ginger Doss, who I'd not heard before, and who has a beautiful voice, the kind that makes fellow enbies perk up and think positive thoughts about what that can mean for them. (The last time I saw s00j perform live, I didn't sing and that's such a fascinating and important shift in my own life).

And the thing that is the same between me then and me now is that she is still my favourite artist. Pretty sure if you'd asked me at any point in these nine years "hey Sor, who's your favourite musical artist" her name would cross my lips. That hasn't stopped or changed. She is still passionately important to me, and her music is still a huge part of who I am.

So it was really fucking good to see her, but honest-to-god, nothing made it as clear how much I have grown-the-fuck-up in the last decade as doing so. Because yeah, I still cried, but after I could hug her and exchange banter and be friendly (she said "hi Kat!" and even if she just got a reminder of my name from the very short guest list, that kicks ass). I'm not ever gonna match a goddess on her own turf, but I've reached a point where I no longer have to be weird about visiting her there.

It's nice to not spend the entire concert sobbing, yanno?

There's another concert tomorrow night (they said, at an hour small enough that tomorrow starts to feel meaningless) and I think it will be nice to go to that too. And it's a good reminder that there've been concerts and livestreams in between and I've been not as good about attending those as I once was, and I should really get back into it.

The me is different, and the her is different (hell, last time I saw her she had not yet made a whole-ass human) but sometimes the mood stays. The good parts stay.

(Persist, resist, and bloom <3)

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Okay, not my *entire* history, but I did see the post I made where I was first squeeing about kissing Austin, and boy, I never have really been subtle about that sort of thing, have I?

2: A thing I'm not sure I've ever connected publicly in this journal, but yeah, if you've been a long time follower and remembered some particular cryptics, that's what it was? Iunno.

SetList:
Roses in the Rocks
Little Bird
[two Ginger songs - She Wolf and Hippie Pocket]
Wonders
Believe in Lullabies
[two Ginger songs - Talisman, Gaia Lives]
La Sirene
Chalk on the Sidewalk
[Ginger/s00j collab - Ma Belle]
Wild Times
[Ginger song - Thankful]

(I originally wrote "as best as I can remember" but hey, when you are crammed up in the very front row, and you notice someone holding a notebook that looks like a setlist and then they foolishly put it down on the ground, you're gonna take a picture. The only memory part was remembering the bits s00j swapped out and what for, but I've got that)

(no subject)

I am visiting my mom, and it feels good to help them actually accomplish things around the house.

See, my grandparents died back in March, and that means that my mother currently owns a substantial amount of their _stuff_ that needs going through. Some of it is being kept, because it's cool or sentimental. Most of it is going to the thrift store because we don't actually need, like, all their clothing or whatever. This is a hell of a sorting task we've got on.

And I helped out going through everything in the garage! There's now a large pile of things to go directly to the dump (which is a Saturday project) and there's one bin full of laptops/electronics that need to go to Aunt Sara to go through, and one bin full of papers that are (probably) super recycleable but might not all be. And everything else got hauled in one of two van-loads to the thrift shop! We did it! There is still heaps and heaps of this project to do, but we actually did one substantial piece of it.

I'm going to be taking just masses of pens and some pairs of scissors and a few rulers, which is wonderful to have good classroom stuff. And a few other neat things --I continue to collect my grandfather's handkerchiefs, and I may be about to own my dead-grandma-Ruth's copy of the Joy of Cooking¹, we have to check with Sara.

Tomorrow I'm going to wander over to Veronica's house to hang out and co-work --possibly that looks like doing useful digital tasks like organizing photos, plausibly that's me playing Stardew Valley while she does real work. We'll see. And then Saturday evening I'm going to an itty-bitty s00j house concert (omg so excited) and then Sunday and Monday and Tuesday are just working days again to keep going through boxen from the shed. It's a nice project to be a part of, because I am always nosy and like looking at _stuff_.

And it feels good to be helpful, yes I have it to a sin sometimes, but sometimes it's just a virtue to be able to make other people's lives easier. To look at someone and continually say "let's do something productive", to help encourage those jobs that are continually in want of being done to actually be so. It feels nice that I am helping!

That's what I've got. Goodnight, friends. Keep taking care of each other.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: Dead-Grandma-Ruth is not Grandma Brin, my grandda's second wife who I knew. She's my mom's mom, who died when my mom was in college, because fuck cancer, and never met my da or me. She was, by all accounts, fucking cool as hell.