The ghosts of them surround me
Dec. 30th, 2025 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sovayOut of intolerable exhaustion, I may have slept close to twelve hours last night. The dreams I can remember were banally about a T station that does not exist in the middle of a salt marsh, much less have a sort of ferry situation for cars. Less fortuitously, our kitchen was abruptly deprived of this water this weekend and the property manager has not yet sent a plumber to take a look at it. We have kept the taps faithfully dripping through the well below freezing temperatures, but as we have no control over the state of the pipes in the still uninhabited upstairs apartment, we are concerned. The last time something went wrong with the kitchen sink, half our pantry got ripped out. Have some links.
1. Following that meme about random geographic coordinates which assumes instantaneous transportation to the location with nothing but the objects currently on one's person, I rolled 28.36967, 80.57272 and seem to have been dropped in the middle of the Sharda River closest to the village of Majhaura in Uttar Pradesh. The good news is that it's south of the famous whitewater and the rumors of man-eating goonch and when it's not monsoon season, it seems to have a relatively placid flow, albeit to the detriment of the surrounding communities it's been changing its course onto for decades. It's overcast, in the Fahrenheit forties, a little past seven in the morning. I am going to vote that I will be cold, exhausted, annoyed, and lose my shoes, but probably not drowned. As I know an extremely small number of words in Hindi and none whatsoever in Bhojpuri, it may take me a little while to explain the situation.
2. I had never heard of the Television Village:
This lack of formal training came back to bite the presenters multiple times. Hornby remembers being chastised by a producer for ruining "continuity" after getting a perm; Terry Jones of Monty Python fame tried to eat the studio's pet goldfish during an interview; and the whole production was put at risk when a Weetabix box that was being used as a prop to hold up scripts out of sight of the camera was accidentally broadcast, potentially breaching advertising rules. Numerous people involved with the station recall the broadcast being interrupted, only for it to turn out that a sheep had chewed through cable wires.
spatch who did public-access television and college radio in the Pioneer Valley around the same time nodded in enthusiastic recognition as I read selections out to him. I am hoping that my keyboard survives the spit-take of the Weetabix box.
3. I had no idea that steak tips were specific to New England. I wonder if that means my parents only started making them after moving to the Boston area. They always seemed to occupy an intermediate niche between kebabs and London broil.
4. Intrigued by a photo of Neal Ascherson, I vectored through his aunt Renée and discovered that a film I have wanted to see since grad school was rediscovered this summer. I had not been aware that The Cure for Love (1949) had actually ever been lost: I just knew it as the sole film directed by co-star and producer Robert Donat which never did me the courtesy of turning up on any of my streaming services or the free internet. If it made it to TPTV, fingers crossed for TCM.
5. How did I miss the existence of The Vatican Stole the Menorah and We're Going to Steal It Back (2025), a one-shot, dreidel-powered TTRPG complete with a Player's Guide for the Perplexed? Obstacles include some schmuck and the Popemobile, allies include space lasers and the Golem of Prague. I hope they make their end-of-year goal.
P.S. I have just been informed of the existence of a bilingual Sanskrit–Greek stele from the third century CE. This is such a neat planet. I wish people would not make it so difficult to inhabit.
1. Following that meme about random geographic coordinates which assumes instantaneous transportation to the location with nothing but the objects currently on one's person, I rolled 28.36967, 80.57272 and seem to have been dropped in the middle of the Sharda River closest to the village of Majhaura in Uttar Pradesh. The good news is that it's south of the famous whitewater and the rumors of man-eating goonch and when it's not monsoon season, it seems to have a relatively placid flow, albeit to the detriment of the surrounding communities it's been changing its course onto for decades. It's overcast, in the Fahrenheit forties, a little past seven in the morning. I am going to vote that I will be cold, exhausted, annoyed, and lose my shoes, but probably not drowned. As I know an extremely small number of words in Hindi and none whatsoever in Bhojpuri, it may take me a little while to explain the situation.
2. I had never heard of the Television Village:
This lack of formal training came back to bite the presenters multiple times. Hornby remembers being chastised by a producer for ruining "continuity" after getting a perm; Terry Jones of Monty Python fame tried to eat the studio's pet goldfish during an interview; and the whole production was put at risk when a Weetabix box that was being used as a prop to hold up scripts out of sight of the camera was accidentally broadcast, potentially breaching advertising rules. Numerous people involved with the station recall the broadcast being interrupted, only for it to turn out that a sheep had chewed through cable wires.
spatch who did public-access television and college radio in the Pioneer Valley around the same time nodded in enthusiastic recognition as I read selections out to him. I am hoping that my keyboard survives the spit-take of the Weetabix box.3. I had no idea that steak tips were specific to New England. I wonder if that means my parents only started making them after moving to the Boston area. They always seemed to occupy an intermediate niche between kebabs and London broil.
4. Intrigued by a photo of Neal Ascherson, I vectored through his aunt Renée and discovered that a film I have wanted to see since grad school was rediscovered this summer. I had not been aware that The Cure for Love (1949) had actually ever been lost: I just knew it as the sole film directed by co-star and producer Robert Donat which never did me the courtesy of turning up on any of my streaming services or the free internet. If it made it to TPTV, fingers crossed for TCM.
5. How did I miss the existence of The Vatican Stole the Menorah and We're Going to Steal It Back (2025), a one-shot, dreidel-powered TTRPG complete with a Player's Guide for the Perplexed? Obstacles include some schmuck and the Popemobile, allies include space lasers and the Golem of Prague. I hope they make their end-of-year goal.
P.S. I have just been informed of the existence of a bilingual Sanskrit–Greek stele from the third century CE. This is such a neat planet. I wish people would not make it so difficult to inhabit.
Firefly, Road
Dec. 30th, 2025 05:40 pmranunculusCarrie and I did a nice ride this morning. Firefly was very eager to get out and was a good girl. I was riding bareback as I really don't think the saddle fits her, and I don't want her to think all saddles are painful. Since I'm very out of shape (and so is she) I got off and walked for about 1/3 of the trip. She is very wary of any footing that might be muddy. Water is no problem, but mud she is not fond of. After our ride Carrie held her while I did some back tracings to send off to the saddle shop. I'm planning to buy a saddle from a company that specializes in fitting horses. It won't be cheap, but if it fits both Firefly and me it will be worth it.
This afternoon was my second day of grading the road. It is always amazing how much gravel and dirt move around during a year. I did a little work on the road day before yesterday, trying to fill in pot holes and get a tiny bit of slope on about 200 feet of heavily traveled road that is otherwise quite flat. During the year car tires move gravel out of the most commonly used tire tracks and push them to the side. Then it rains and the materials on the side hold the water on the road. Instant pothole. If there is a slope down to the outside, the water has a chance to run off. I got a lot of pot holes filled, but several of them were a bit, um, squishy. That is because there were leaves on the road and they do not make good pothole filler material. So today, after lots and lots of cars had driven over that section and compacted things, I graded again and hopefully got enough gravel in them to stabilize everything.
This year, with all the early grass growth, a lot of the ditches were blocked by grass and clover. Because we have had some torrential downpours that has led to erosion. Grass is also not a very good road surfacing material so some time was spent separating the grass from the gravel. Scraping out the ditches also recovers gravel that has washed off the road. Tricky business right now though, it is so wet that keeping the blade from digging all the way down to the clay layer is hard.
This afternoon was my second day of grading the road. It is always amazing how much gravel and dirt move around during a year. I did a little work on the road day before yesterday, trying to fill in pot holes and get a tiny bit of slope on about 200 feet of heavily traveled road that is otherwise quite flat. During the year car tires move gravel out of the most commonly used tire tracks and push them to the side. Then it rains and the materials on the side hold the water on the road. Instant pothole. If there is a slope down to the outside, the water has a chance to run off. I got a lot of pot holes filled, but several of them were a bit, um, squishy. That is because there were leaves on the road and they do not make good pothole filler material. So today, after lots and lots of cars had driven over that section and compacted things, I graded again and hopefully got enough gravel in them to stabilize everything.
This year, with all the early grass growth, a lot of the ditches were blocked by grass and clover. Because we have had some torrential downpours that has led to erosion. Grass is also not a very good road surfacing material so some time was spent separating the grass from the gravel. Scraping out the ditches also recovers gravel that has washed off the road. Tricky business right now though, it is so wet that keeping the blade from digging all the way down to the clay layer is hard.
Podfic: Roguish charm (Obi-Wan Kenobi/Hondo Ohnaka limericks)
Dec. 30th, 2025 08:55 pmpetraRoguish charm (111 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, Star Wars - All Media Types
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Hondo Ohnaka
Characters: Hondo Ohnaka, Obi-Wan Kenobi
Additional Tags: Limericks, Seduction, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Gift Fic
Summary:
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, Star Wars - All Media Types
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Hondo Ohnaka
Characters: Hondo Ohnaka, Obi-Wan Kenobi
Additional Tags: Limericks, Seduction, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Gift Fic
Summary:
A cycle of limericks for the space pirate and the Negotiator.
Book Review
Dec. 30th, 2025 07:05 pmkenjariShield of Winter
by Nalini Singh
This is the 13th Psy-Changeling novel and the Psy world is undergoing a monumental shift. The Silence that repressed Psy emotions has fallen and there is a rot on the psychic plane infecting Psy and driving them into violent frenzies. The Psy must re-awaken their dormant empaths or perish. One of these empaths is Ivy who has long been free of Silence. When Ivy is recruited to a pilot empath training program aimed at defeating the rot and infection, Vasic is assigned as her protector. As they work together to combat the rot and help to stabilize society, they also forge a connection that breaks Vasic out of Silence and blossoms into a deep love.
I really enjoyed this one a lot. The stakes for the socio-political plot were very high, which made everything feel more urgent and made the emotional currents run deeper and stronger. I really liked how the development of Vasic and Ivy's relationship was echoed in the discoveries the Psy were making about the empaths' roles in keeping the psychic plane healthy. Vasic and Ivy were also so great together - they were both willing to fight so hard for each other and to go to great lengths to take care of and protect each other.
by Nalini Singh
This is the 13th Psy-Changeling novel and the Psy world is undergoing a monumental shift. The Silence that repressed Psy emotions has fallen and there is a rot on the psychic plane infecting Psy and driving them into violent frenzies. The Psy must re-awaken their dormant empaths or perish. One of these empaths is Ivy who has long been free of Silence. When Ivy is recruited to a pilot empath training program aimed at defeating the rot and infection, Vasic is assigned as her protector. As they work together to combat the rot and help to stabilize society, they also forge a connection that breaks Vasic out of Silence and blossoms into a deep love.
I really enjoyed this one a lot. The stakes for the socio-political plot were very high, which made everything feel more urgent and made the emotional currents run deeper and stronger. I really liked how the development of Vasic and Ivy's relationship was echoed in the discoveries the Psy were making about the empaths' roles in keeping the psychic plane healthy. Vasic and Ivy were also so great together - they were both willing to fight so hard for each other and to go to great lengths to take care of and protect each other.
some things make a post
Dec. 30th, 2025 11:59 pmkaberett- The paragraph from one of the pain books about Soup continues excellent for dramatic readings. I appear to have not quoted it here? I shall have to remedy that in the morning.
- My Shit Beard Hairs (I think I'm up to... 10ish of them, fairly reliably?) are increasingly white, which makes them increasingly hard to remove in targeted fashion (which I care about solely because the sensory experience of Isolated Hairs is Bad, Actually). I am amused by all of this.
- I am nearly up to halfway through December in my DW catch-up. Will I manage to be actually up to date by the end of the calendar year? PROBABLY NOT, because I am about to hit Year In Review season, when for some reason you all get very talkative!
- Absolutely have not set up my notebook for next year yet, and indeed am several days behind on physio log (augh). Executive Function Is Hard, Actually. This is the other factor that is likely to derail getting caught up on DW tomorrow...
- Successfully offloaded some leftovers at a Boardgames And (Fake) Leftovers gathering (with air purifier, and carrageenan nose spray). Tragically, left behind the tea strainer that we'd been using to fix the problem of Cork In The Port...
The Copenhagen Test: A Review
Dec. 30th, 2025 06:55 pmstevenpiziksI've been watching The Copenhagen Test lately, and I'm halfway through the third episode. (The full season dropped on Peacock a few days ago.)
I'm watching it partly because Simu Liu is in it. You know, the guy from Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings? I like him, and he needs to be in more stuff!
And I'm watching it partly because Brian d'Arcy James is in it. Brian and I were friends back in high school and early college when we both were doing amateur theater and did a few shows together. I went into teaching, and Brian went to Broadway--and Hollywood. For non-theater folks, the shows you might have heard about are the musical SHREK (he originated the title character), SOMETHING ROTTEN (he originated Nick Bottom), and HAMILTON (he originated King George), though the role I remember him most for was reporter Matt Carroll in SPOTLIGHT, the movie about the reporters who broke the story about child molestation in the Catholic church.
Anyway, Alexander (Liu), is a spy who, it turns out, has been unwittingly loaded up with technology that broadcasts everything he sees and hears to an unknown adversary. Brian plays Peter Moira, a nattily-dressed fatherly figure who is second in command of the division where Alexander works. The two of them have to figure out how to trust each other while also figuring out who the adversary is. Pete has the nagging feeling that Alexander is in on the sensors in his brain, while Alexander wonders if he should vanish before Pete has him quietly killed. Trust is a major over-arcing theme in the show.
I'm liking the show quite a lot. There are layers to the storytelling, when the story backs up and shows us the same set of events from an entirely different perspective that changes everything we know. I always enjoy that kind of thing.
Another plus is that the writers got rid of that stupid, tired spy trope in which the spy is not only fighting bad guys, but is also fighting his own dysfunctional agency (because of bureaucracy, a mole, political pressure, or that the spy has been forced to go rogue and now everyone wants his head). Instead, we have an agency that WANTS the spy to succeed and WANTS to protect its own people. The administration, as embodied by Pete, is actually supportive of the spy and does its best to help him. Goodness, who knew that could happen? It's refreshing and it lets us viewers concentrate instead on the complex plotting--another thing I like.
It's way worth your time to catch the show.
I'm watching it partly because Simu Liu is in it. You know, the guy from Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings? I like him, and he needs to be in more stuff!
And I'm watching it partly because Brian d'Arcy James is in it. Brian and I were friends back in high school and early college when we both were doing amateur theater and did a few shows together. I went into teaching, and Brian went to Broadway--and Hollywood. For non-theater folks, the shows you might have heard about are the musical SHREK (he originated the title character), SOMETHING ROTTEN (he originated Nick Bottom), and HAMILTON (he originated King George), though the role I remember him most for was reporter Matt Carroll in SPOTLIGHT, the movie about the reporters who broke the story about child molestation in the Catholic church.
Anyway, Alexander (Liu), is a spy who, it turns out, has been unwittingly loaded up with technology that broadcasts everything he sees and hears to an unknown adversary. Brian plays Peter Moira, a nattily-dressed fatherly figure who is second in command of the division where Alexander works. The two of them have to figure out how to trust each other while also figuring out who the adversary is. Pete has the nagging feeling that Alexander is in on the sensors in his brain, while Alexander wonders if he should vanish before Pete has him quietly killed. Trust is a major over-arcing theme in the show.
I'm liking the show quite a lot. There are layers to the storytelling, when the story backs up and shows us the same set of events from an entirely different perspective that changes everything we know. I always enjoy that kind of thing.
Another plus is that the writers got rid of that stupid, tired spy trope in which the spy is not only fighting bad guys, but is also fighting his own dysfunctional agency (because of bureaucracy, a mole, political pressure, or that the spy has been forced to go rogue and now everyone wants his head). Instead, we have an agency that WANTS the spy to succeed and WANTS to protect its own people. The administration, as embodied by Pete, is actually supportive of the spy and does its best to help him. Goodness, who knew that could happen? It's refreshing and it lets us viewers concentrate instead on the complex plotting--another thing I like.
It's way worth your time to catch the show.
(no subject)
Dec. 30th, 2025 06:53 pmaurumcalendulaI'm planning to attempt the ginger cookie recipe that hasn't quite come out right for me in the past (they didn't spread they way the picture indicated they should) with baking soda instead of baking powder and see if they turn out better.
(I'm unclear if there's a difference between UK self-raising flour and US self-rising flour. iirc most the recipes for making self-rising flour involve adding 1.5 tsp baking powder and 0.25 tsp salt to 1 cup flour, but the chocolate chip cookies I made the other day used baking soda so I figure it's worth a try.)
(I'm unclear if there's a difference between UK self-raising flour and US self-rising flour. iirc most the recipes for making self-rising flour involve adding 1.5 tsp baking powder and 0.25 tsp salt to 1 cup flour, but the chocolate chip cookies I made the other day used baking soda so I figure it's worth a try.)
Book Reviews: The Scorpion Rules and The Swan Riders (Prisoners of Peace series) by Erin Bow
Dec. 30th, 2025 03:50 pmjuushikaTitle: The Scorpion Rules (Prisoners of Peace book 1)
Author: Erin Bow
Narrator: Madeleine Maby
Published: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2015
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 390
Total Page Count: 555,850
Text Number: 2085
Read Because:ambyr's post, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The children of peace are hostages of the world nations, held by the governing AI, doomed to die if their home nation goes to war. Our protagonist is prepared to face that death with dignity—until the newest hostage, from a rival nation, bucks all convention. I don't get on with YA as a rule, and so avoid it; I don't want to spend this review bitching about a genre that's just not for me, but when a book so perfectly executes what I wish the genre would do, my success with it speaks equally to text and its relationship with genre conventions.
The tropes are still here: snarky antagonist, love triangle, dystopia. But it's quality writing, and those tropes are balanced in, grounded by, a thoughtful consideration of worldbuilding and an unrelenting commitment to character and psychology. The scale is horrifying, the specificities localized and intimate; the romance(s) both indicative of and wholly overshadowed by the world; the depiction of torture, trauma, and PTSD thoughtful and realized with a fantastic use of repetition. This remains as iddy as the genre can & should be, but frankly it's better quality than most of the genre is, and so takes a great premise and actually does something with it.
Title: The Swan Riders (Prisoners of Peace book 2)
Author: Erin Bow
Narrator: Madeleine Maby
Published: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2016
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 380
Total Page Count: 556,230
Text Number: 2086
Read Because:ambyr's post, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Despite that this is a different book than the first—changed setting, much-changed protagonist—my reactions are quite similar, finding and appreciating the same strengths. High-concept, speculative premise, and in the background-moving-foreground is an inconceivable scale; and, in the foreground, a focus on intimate social bonds, symbolic of and felt in the larger cultural context, grounded in a minute, exhausting focus on physical and mental trauma. It's iddy, with hurt/comfort vibes, but consistently well-written. I read these on audio, and look forward to revisiting them in print for a more considered experience. What a pleasant surprise it was to give this series a try.
Author: Erin Bow
Narrator: Madeleine Maby
Published: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2015
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 390
Total Page Count: 555,850
Text Number: 2085
Read Because:
ambyr's post, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County LibraryReview: The children of peace are hostages of the world nations, held by the governing AI, doomed to die if their home nation goes to war. Our protagonist is prepared to face that death with dignity—until the newest hostage, from a rival nation, bucks all convention. I don't get on with YA as a rule, and so avoid it; I don't want to spend this review bitching about a genre that's just not for me, but when a book so perfectly executes what I wish the genre would do, my success with it speaks equally to text and its relationship with genre conventions.
The tropes are still here: snarky antagonist, love triangle, dystopia. But it's quality writing, and those tropes are balanced in, grounded by, a thoughtful consideration of worldbuilding and an unrelenting commitment to character and psychology. The scale is horrifying, the specificities localized and intimate; the romance(s) both indicative of and wholly overshadowed by the world; the depiction of torture, trauma, and PTSD thoughtful and realized with a fantastic use of repetition. This remains as iddy as the genre can & should be, but frankly it's better quality than most of the genre is, and so takes a great premise and actually does something with it.
Title: The Swan Riders (Prisoners of Peace book 2)
Author: Erin Bow
Narrator: Madeleine Maby
Published: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2016
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 380
Total Page Count: 556,230
Text Number: 2086
Read Because:
ambyr's post, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County LibraryReview: Despite that this is a different book than the first—changed setting, much-changed protagonist—my reactions are quite similar, finding and appreciating the same strengths. High-concept, speculative premise, and in the background-moving-foreground is an inconceivable scale; and, in the foreground, a focus on intimate social bonds, symbolic of and felt in the larger cultural context, grounded in a minute, exhausting focus on physical and mental trauma. It's iddy, with hurt/comfort vibes, but consistently well-written. I read these on audio, and look forward to revisiting them in print for a more considered experience. What a pleasant surprise it was to give this series a try.
(no subject)
Dec. 30th, 2025 03:32 pmcupcake_gothRemember that serious back spasm I had around three weeks ago? Things haven’t really gotten better. In fact, I’m having random shooting pain in my sides, hips, and down my thighs. So for once in my life I’m doing the sensible thing and have canceled my trip to Arizona for the week-long company kickoff. Airline travel + wrangling luggage + hotel bed is a perfect combo to cause even worse spasms, and I don’t want to run the risk of having to go to the hospital while I’m away.
I am, of course, feeling MASSIVE guilt about this. Even tho’ I know my new boss and team will support my doing this. This decision is also triggering my ever-present imposter syndrome about I don’t really know how to approach things for my new position and that all of this will lead to me being fired. Logically I know that’s not the case, but whoo the Brain Raccoons are loud
Recommendation: every exit an entrance somewhere else - Ros & Guil are Dead + Tom Stoppard
Dec. 30th, 2025 06:24 pmpetraevery exit an entrance somewhere else (1611 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Rosencrantz (Hamlet), Guildenstern (Hamlet), Tom Stoppard
Additional Tags: Meta, Death
Summary:
*
Beautifully sums up what might well have happened to the spirit of Tom Stoppard posthumously. Made me cry.
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Rosencrantz (Hamlet), Guildenstern (Hamlet), Tom Stoppard
Additional Tags: Meta, Death
Summary:
Death, a boat, et cetera.
*
Beautifully sums up what might well have happened to the spirit of Tom Stoppard posthumously. Made me cry.
year's last miscellanea
Dec. 30th, 2025 03:22 pmcalimac1. Here's an evaluation of all of Rob Reiner's movies, in which, if you follow along, you'll see that the authors consider his eight best movies to be eight of his first nine movies. (The clunker is, of course, North, and if it and The American President had been flipped chronologically, the best eight would have been the first eight.) So what happened? The authors think that the instincts that led Reiner right in his early days went wrong in his later ones.
I've seen six of the eight best (somehow I've missed The Sure Thing and I wouldn't see Misery on a bet) and enjoyed all six*; the only one of his later movies I've seen is LBJ, which was not bad but was carried mostly by Woody Harrelson's performance in the title role. The thing is that I never found Reiner a particularly good director in the technical sense - the climbing of the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride was embarrassingly clumsy - but in his good movies he was great in other ways: his versatility in genre (the guy who made Spinal Tap made A Few Good Men? Amazing), brilliant casting all around (that's what really knocked my socks off about Princess Bride in particular), and his ability to let the script and the acting shine through.
*Though I enjoyed When Harry Met Sally, I bristled at Harry's contention that all men are like him. If there's one thing I've learned from life, it's that people are different. Reiner and Nora Ephron may have based Harry on himself, but I am not like that and neither are most of the men I know.
2. Saw an article somewhere in which Sam Altman was quoted as saying that you can't raise a child without the help of A.I. Here's not the original article but a more critical commentary. Apparently the A.I.'s job is to reassure you that you're not screwing up. Dr. Spock said pretty much the same thing; why don't you just read him? Because you can be sure that, though he might be wrong, he's not just making crap up, which A.I. is prone to doing. When ChatGPT first showed up, I experimented by asking it some tough musical questions I knew the answers to, and it only seriously messed up some but rarely got everything totally right.
Once I learned what it does, I would never ask A.I. for advice on anything real. In practice, I use it only to remind me when I need a word I know but which has slipped my mind, which happens depressingly often these days, maybe once a month. The last one was "foyer." At least then I know the answer is right when I see it.
I certainly wouldn't ask it to draft any writings for me. I wonder if I would ask it to do so if I still had to write anything that I struggled with the wording of. But the writing I had most trouble with was job application letters, and that requires personalized stuff the A.I. wouldn't know. So probably not.
3. But one technical advance I am very happy with is the U.S. Post Office's "Daily Digest" which sends you an e-mail early each morning showing the envelopes you're expected to receive that day. (Mailers, magazines, and packages are excluded, though it does tell you how many packages to expect.) So if a bill doesn't come, that's because your delivery person is running behind, and if it doesn't come the next day, that's when you call the biller and ask them to send another copy.
I've seen six of the eight best (somehow I've missed The Sure Thing and I wouldn't see Misery on a bet) and enjoyed all six*; the only one of his later movies I've seen is LBJ, which was not bad but was carried mostly by Woody Harrelson's performance in the title role. The thing is that I never found Reiner a particularly good director in the technical sense - the climbing of the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride was embarrassingly clumsy - but in his good movies he was great in other ways: his versatility in genre (the guy who made Spinal Tap made A Few Good Men? Amazing), brilliant casting all around (that's what really knocked my socks off about Princess Bride in particular), and his ability to let the script and the acting shine through.
*Though I enjoyed When Harry Met Sally, I bristled at Harry's contention that all men are like him. If there's one thing I've learned from life, it's that people are different. Reiner and Nora Ephron may have based Harry on himself, but I am not like that and neither are most of the men I know.
2. Saw an article somewhere in which Sam Altman was quoted as saying that you can't raise a child without the help of A.I. Here's not the original article but a more critical commentary. Apparently the A.I.'s job is to reassure you that you're not screwing up. Dr. Spock said pretty much the same thing; why don't you just read him? Because you can be sure that, though he might be wrong, he's not just making crap up, which A.I. is prone to doing. When ChatGPT first showed up, I experimented by asking it some tough musical questions I knew the answers to, and it only seriously messed up some but rarely got everything totally right.
Once I learned what it does, I would never ask A.I. for advice on anything real. In practice, I use it only to remind me when I need a word I know but which has slipped my mind, which happens depressingly often these days, maybe once a month. The last one was "foyer." At least then I know the answer is right when I see it.
I certainly wouldn't ask it to draft any writings for me. I wonder if I would ask it to do so if I still had to write anything that I struggled with the wording of. But the writing I had most trouble with was job application letters, and that requires personalized stuff the A.I. wouldn't know. So probably not.
3. But one technical advance I am very happy with is the U.S. Post Office's "Daily Digest" which sends you an e-mail early each morning showing the envelopes you're expected to receive that day. (Mailers, magazines, and packages are excluded, though it does tell you how many packages to expect.) So if a bill doesn't come, that's because your delivery person is running behind, and if it doesn't come the next day, that's when you call the biller and ask them to send another copy.
2025 book roundup
Dec. 30th, 2025 05:23 pmpauraqueIn 2025 I posted reviews of 47 books, of which 7 were re-reads, 5 were revisions of old reviews, and 35 were books I read for the first time this year.
( and here they are )
This brought me up to 11 novels and two short story collections in my chronological Le Guin project. Have I made much of a dent? Well, her website says she produced "23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation" so I have certainly taken a big bite out of the novels even though I'm only up to 1976. I don't think I realized how novel-heavy her early career was. I am not planning to read all the poetry (I'll probably do some) and the only translation I'll be looking at is her Tao Te Ching. And yet, even when I sketch out a planned posting schedule that assumes I'll be grouping some of the picture books together, it still comes out as three more years and I don't know how that's possible. Stay tuned to find out if she really wrote as many things as I think she did, or if I just can't read a calendar.
At the end of last year my TBR list had 180 books on it, and my goal was for that number to go down. Which it did. By three. It's not that I wasn't reading things from the list, it's that I kept adding more. I decided to do a big cull, mostly of books that had been on there for way too long and I couldn't honestly say I was interested anymore. Now it's down to 140.
Of the books I read for the first time this year, my favorites include: The Backyard Bird Chronicles, The Spear Cuts Through Water, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Only Good Indians, and Convenience Store Woman.
( and here they are )
This brought me up to 11 novels and two short story collections in my chronological Le Guin project. Have I made much of a dent? Well, her website says she produced "23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation" so I have certainly taken a big bite out of the novels even though I'm only up to 1976. I don't think I realized how novel-heavy her early career was. I am not planning to read all the poetry (I'll probably do some) and the only translation I'll be looking at is her Tao Te Ching. And yet, even when I sketch out a planned posting schedule that assumes I'll be grouping some of the picture books together, it still comes out as three more years and I don't know how that's possible. Stay tuned to find out if she really wrote as many things as I think she did, or if I just can't read a calendar.
At the end of last year my TBR list had 180 books on it, and my goal was for that number to go down. Which it did. By three. It's not that I wasn't reading things from the list, it's that I kept adding more. I decided to do a big cull, mostly of books that had been on there for way too long and I couldn't honestly say I was interested anymore. Now it's down to 140.
Of the books I read for the first time this year, my favorites include: The Backyard Bird Chronicles, The Spear Cuts Through Water, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Only Good Indians, and Convenience Store Woman.
Fandom year in review
Dec. 30th, 2025 02:14 pmsholioI used to do these more regularly, back in the LJ and early DW days when a lot of people used to do end-of-year lists of their fic in case you'd missed anything, before so much of it was consolidated on AO3. I never really was that organized about it, but over time my (slightly chaotic) end-of-year fandom posts were taken over by my origfic roundup posts, and I stopped doing them entirely. But as this is my 20th (or so) year in LJ/DW fandom, perhaps this is a good time to start doing them again, especially since this was a very exciting and interesting year for me! (I also did a year-end roundup meme over on Tumblr, which is where some of this was originally consolidated.)
I'm still in Biggles, but I also got into three, count 'em, 3 new fandoms, although none of them were entirely new to me:
I posted 215,777 words of fic on AO3 according to their stats. (My personal accounting is 296,200, which includes all the promptfic and unfinished fics.) This is way up from the last couple of years, and I'm also starting to write longer fic again - everything I posted in 2023-24 was under 10K.
I started making vids again, and posted 3 (2 MASH as treats for last year's Festivids, 1 for Murderbot).
In general, I started being able to "do" visual media again last winter. I hadn't really been watching anything for the past couple of years, or watching vids, or really doing much of anything in a visual medium. Last winter I bought a tablet (Black Friday sale) that I planned to use for media watching, and it did in fact work out very well for that! I wanted it at least partly as a distraction from IRL, which has really been A Lot - not even speaking about world events, but just me personally. My stepdad died in January, and I've spent this past year traveling back and forth between my mom's place and here, helping her adjust. And then I got back into actual travel this fall, with a trip to England and then most recently Hawaii for the holidays. So it's been nice to have visual media as a kind of touchstone to anchor me by. I also read a lot.
I'm coming off a bad couple of years, in fandom and overall - I burned out, I lost some friends, I was kind of hard to deal with in general, I think. But this year has felt much better to me. I've been having an amazing time with my new shiny things, I'm creatively active and excited about writing in a way that I haven't really felt in years, and I really like a lot of what I wrote this year. There have still been ups and downs even with that, of course - I have *got* to get back in the habit of editing more before I post things, I know I'll be happier with it. But all in all, I like where things are for me now.
I honestly kind of hope I don't get into anything new in 2026, at least not right away, because I'm really happy with my current fandoms and I have lots more to "say" about them in fic, I feel!
I'm still in Biggles, but I also got into three, count 'em, 3 new fandoms, although none of them were entirely new to me:
- MASH: rewatch of a show I watched a lot as a kid, but hadn't actually seen again as an adult (except a scattered episode here and there). I didn't expect it to grab me fannishly, but that's what I get for guessing. I've drifted out again now, I think, but it was a good time and a really delightful nostalgia rush.
- Babylon 5: watched about two and a half seasons back in the 90s, always meant to go back and finish it before I got completely spoiled, fell as hard as I always suspected I would.
- Murderbot: read the first book years ago, didn't really vibe with it, turned out to love the show.
I posted 215,777 words of fic on AO3 according to their stats. (My personal accounting is 296,200, which includes all the promptfic and unfinished fics.) This is way up from the last couple of years, and I'm also starting to write longer fic again - everything I posted in 2023-24 was under 10K.
I started making vids again, and posted 3 (2 MASH as treats for last year's Festivids, 1 for Murderbot).
In general, I started being able to "do" visual media again last winter. I hadn't really been watching anything for the past couple of years, or watching vids, or really doing much of anything in a visual medium. Last winter I bought a tablet (Black Friday sale) that I planned to use for media watching, and it did in fact work out very well for that! I wanted it at least partly as a distraction from IRL, which has really been A Lot - not even speaking about world events, but just me personally. My stepdad died in January, and I've spent this past year traveling back and forth between my mom's place and here, helping her adjust. And then I got back into actual travel this fall, with a trip to England and then most recently Hawaii for the holidays. So it's been nice to have visual media as a kind of touchstone to anchor me by. I also read a lot.
I'm coming off a bad couple of years, in fandom and overall - I burned out, I lost some friends, I was kind of hard to deal with in general, I think. But this year has felt much better to me. I've been having an amazing time with my new shiny things, I'm creatively active and excited about writing in a way that I haven't really felt in years, and I really like a lot of what I wrote this year. There have still been ups and downs even with that, of course - I have *got* to get back in the habit of editing more before I post things, I know I'll be happier with it. But all in all, I like where things are for me now.
I honestly kind of hope I don't get into anything new in 2026, at least not right away, because I'm really happy with my current fandoms and I have lots more to "say" about them in fic, I feel!
Book Review: The Complete Web of Horror edited by Dana Marie Andra
Dec. 30th, 2025 02:55 pmjuushikaTitle: The Complete Web of Horror
Editor: Dana Marie Andra
Published: 2024
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 295
Total Page Count: 555,460
Text Number: 2084
Read Because: seduced by the new books section, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: Web of Horror was a short-running horror fiction comic anthology, published in 1969-70, collected here in its entirety, including prospective issues that went unpublished when it folded.
"Strangers!" by Syd Shores (volume three, page thirty) is about a twink and a bear struggling to survive after crashlanding on a desert island. The twink is useless, and growing weaker every day, but the bear looks after him, feeding him wild game. Because! the bear is a vampire! and preserving the twink as a food source, feeding on him each night! After the twink finally fights back, rescue comes—but it's too late, the twink has become a bear/vampire, himself! (You can find this here on Archive.org.)
I highlight this story because it's delightful; the subtext really is that close to the text, the art reflects the innuendo, and it's well-paced and -plotted. But it's telling that I'd rather talk about one piece than the mammoth collection. The other standout is "Eye of Newt, Toe of Frog" by Frank Brunner (art) and Gerald Conway (story), unpublished in the original run, here in Volume 4, about a rebellious wife reverse psychology'd into dark magic invocations. And that's it. Plenty of the pieces are fine, most are tolerable, but this is more interesting as an artifact of its time than in the individual stories; a forerunner in horror comics, it has all the prejudices expected from the time period and speculative plots that are more spectacle than psychological, a Twilight Zone-y "wouldn't it be fucked if...?". I'm grateful for archival efforts like this one, but would only recommend this to ultra fans; I appreciate genre history but not Western comics, and I think you need to be big into both to get much from this.
Editor: Dana Marie Andra
Published: 2024
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 295
Total Page Count: 555,460
Text Number: 2084
Read Because: seduced by the new books section, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: Web of Horror was a short-running horror fiction comic anthology, published in 1969-70, collected here in its entirety, including prospective issues that went unpublished when it folded.
"Strangers!" by Syd Shores (volume three, page thirty) is about a twink and a bear struggling to survive after crashlanding on a desert island. The twink is useless, and growing weaker every day, but the bear looks after him, feeding him wild game. Because! the bear is a vampire! and preserving the twink as a food source, feeding on him each night! After the twink finally fights back, rescue comes—but it's too late, the twink has become a bear/vampire, himself! (You can find this here on Archive.org.)
I highlight this story because it's delightful; the subtext really is that close to the text, the art reflects the innuendo, and it's well-paced and -plotted. But it's telling that I'd rather talk about one piece than the mammoth collection. The other standout is "Eye of Newt, Toe of Frog" by Frank Brunner (art) and Gerald Conway (story), unpublished in the original run, here in Volume 4, about a rebellious wife reverse psychology'd into dark magic invocations. And that's it. Plenty of the pieces are fine, most are tolerable, but this is more interesting as an artifact of its time than in the individual stories; a forerunner in horror comics, it has all the prejudices expected from the time period and speculative plots that are more spectacle than psychological, a Twilight Zone-y "wouldn't it be fucked if...?". I'm grateful for archival efforts like this one, but would only recommend this to ultra fans; I appreciate genre history but not Western comics, and I think you need to be big into both to get much from this.
Speaking Without Words
Dec. 30th, 2025 10:23 pmlokifanI never posted this here! :o
This was written in such a panic, haha, but it has a good rate of bookmarking on AO3 so I think it came out okay??? And I'm still so pleased I finally wrote cute werewolf fic.
Title: Speaking Without Words
Word count: ~10, 400
Characters/pairings: Noctis/Prompto
Rating: Teen
Summary: Being a werewolf wasn’t a big problem in Prompto’s life until he was about sixteen. But now Noct was definitely gonna find out - and then Ignis would find out.
Content notes: emotional hurt/comfort
Author’s Notes: This was written formaniikoi for the Promptis Exchange. Many thanks to the incredible patience and kindness of the mod, star54kar, and to sodsta for his beta-ing!
AO3 link
( Speaking Without Words )
This was written in such a panic, haha, but it has a good rate of bookmarking on AO3 so I think it came out okay??? And I'm still so pleased I finally wrote cute werewolf fic.
Title: Speaking Without Words
Word count: ~10, 400
Characters/pairings: Noctis/Prompto
Rating: Teen
Summary: Being a werewolf wasn’t a big problem in Prompto’s life until he was about sixteen. But now Noct was definitely gonna find out - and then Ignis would find out.
Content notes: emotional hurt/comfort
Author’s Notes: This was written for
maniikoi for the Promptis Exchange. Many thanks to the incredible patience and kindness of the mod, star54kar, and to sodsta for his beta-ing!AO3 link
( Speaking Without Words )
Book Review: The Heart of the Antarctic by Earnest Shackleton
Dec. 30th, 2025 02:25 pmjuushikaTitle: The Heart of the Antarctic: Being the Story of the British Antarctic Expedition 1907-9
Author: Earnest Shackleton
Published: 1909
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 1310 (670+640)
Total Page Count: 555,165
Text Number: 2082-3
Read Because: cold boys, haters edition; ( where to find, for nerds )
Review:
The Nimrod expedition was the first Shackleton led, 1907-9, placing it directly between Scott's Discovery (on which Shackleton was a member) and infamous Terra Nova, and later overshadowed by Shackleton's also-infamous Endurance. Hate to say it, because I'm certain I'd find Shackleton, the man, super obnoxious, but he knows what the people want. This is some of the best curated, most satisfying expedition writing I've read, intentionally accessible to the layreader, incredibly corporeal and crunchy in detail, right down to descriptions of sleeping arrangements and food poisoning, to photos of people in their bunks or in drag, while still willing to skim elements that might be repetitive recounted in full. Kudos, I think, to his editor, as Shackleton's letters imply much of that curation and directness comes from an outside influence; and it's utterly absent in Dr. David's extensive sections, which make for a slow end to what's already a mammoth text. The various appendixes are skippable, although whenever these guys write about penguins it's always a delight. I read this immediately after Riffenburgh's Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition and appreciate the larger context, specifically re: social frictions that Shackleton understandably elides despite their significant impact on the expedition.
This expedition exists in intimate conversation with Scott's, and the tension between them is both petty and amiable. But what fascinates me is that Shackleton, too, almost died in his effort at the Pole; in fact, almost anyone who did significant man-hauling in Antarctica almost died, cutting corners and overextending themselves in this supremely inhospitable climate. The more I read, the more the death of Scott et al. feels not like bad luck but simply an inevitability: some sledging party was bound to freeze out there, and it was nearly this one.
Author: Earnest Shackleton
Published: 1909
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 1310 (670+640)
Total Page Count: 555,165
Text Number: 2082-3
Read Because: cold boys, haters edition; ( where to find, for nerds )
Review:
The Nimrod expedition was the first Shackleton led, 1907-9, placing it directly between Scott's Discovery (on which Shackleton was a member) and infamous Terra Nova, and later overshadowed by Shackleton's also-infamous Endurance. Hate to say it, because I'm certain I'd find Shackleton, the man, super obnoxious, but he knows what the people want. This is some of the best curated, most satisfying expedition writing I've read, intentionally accessible to the layreader, incredibly corporeal and crunchy in detail, right down to descriptions of sleeping arrangements and food poisoning, to photos of people in their bunks or in drag, while still willing to skim elements that might be repetitive recounted in full. Kudos, I think, to his editor, as Shackleton's letters imply much of that curation and directness comes from an outside influence; and it's utterly absent in Dr. David's extensive sections, which make for a slow end to what's already a mammoth text. The various appendixes are skippable, although whenever these guys write about penguins it's always a delight. I read this immediately after Riffenburgh's Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition and appreciate the larger context, specifically re: social frictions that Shackleton understandably elides despite their significant impact on the expedition.
This expedition exists in intimate conversation with Scott's, and the tension between them is both petty and amiable. But what fascinates me is that Shackleton, too, almost died in his effort at the Pole; in fact, almost anyone who did significant man-hauling in Antarctica almost died, cutting corners and overextending themselves in this supremely inhospitable climate. The more I read, the more the death of Scott et al. feels not like bad luck but simply an inevitability: some sledging party was bound to freeze out there, and it was nearly this one.