mirlacca

I hit Price Chopper, the Pharmacy, and the Bakery while I was downtown. (McD’s was warmer than yesterday, but still not ~very warm.)

I did a load of laundry, hand-washed dishes, emptied the dishwasher, went for several walks with Pip and the dogs, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, and scooped kitty litter. I made shake ‘n bake chicken thighs for supper and egg salad for weekend lunches.

I watched the current ep of 9-1-1 and both eps of The Pitt, as well as a couple eps of House Hunters International. (How I hate the people who claim they want to live in the city center so they can walk to bars, cafes, restaurants, and then complain that it might be noisy. No fucking kidding, it’s City Center!) Zoo Tampa was my background tv.

I bought several more containers of yogurt in a variety of flavors for my snacks. I have been eating a lot of them, probably because it’s been a while, so they’re tasting especially good. Also, I’m sometimes lazy and they’re easy. I have to switch it up so I don’t get bored with them!

I had no plans to go downtown tomorrow (now today, Saturday), but I’ve had to schedule a doctor’s appointment. I think I have a yeast infection. I haven’t had a yeast infection in years. Decades. I’m not saying the ultrasound is to blame, but I’m also not not saying that.

Temps started out at 13.1(F) and freaking windy! The roads weren’t great on the drive downtown and at one point I saw a cloud of snow swirling in the air before I drove through it. That was different. Temps reached 28.9. The forecast called for a high of 20, so this was a surprise. There was also a bit of sun and I got a peak of blue sky!

Mom Update:

Mom sounded good when I talked to her on the phone. ( more back here )

tropicsbear

‘How do you reduce a national dish to a powder?’: the weird, secretive world of crisp flavours

Reuben and Peggy’s jobs are not top secret in the way top secret jobs usually are. [...] But this is where things get odd: search the name of the company they work for – a name I have agreed not to print – and you’ll find little information about the work Reuben and Peggy do. You could click through every page on their company’s website and leave with no idea that it creates the most beloved crisp flavours in the world.

(I was so sure I'd already shared this, but I can't find the entry.)

I'll always be a fan of longform, deep-dive articles into the most obscure and/or everyday thing. Like, I eat chips fairly often and I'm aware that some countries have flavors that others don't, but I never considered how geopolitics could affect flavor availability.

ciexmod posting in

consent_issues_exchange

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

silveradept

Let us begin with an annual roundup of things that had to be removed from rectums, because people make bad decisions about objects without flared bases.

Trans women whose culture includes the quinceañera are celebrating the rite of passage for themselves as an important touchstone of their lives.

A white suit worn by Kate Mulgrew as Captain Janeway in a Star Trek: Voyager episode is about as loud a billboard declaring Janeway queer as you could get away with on television at the time. I get to be part of the Lucky 10,000 in understanding that suit and its origins, and so, hopefully, do you.

People familiar with the culture and traditions of Hawai'i explain why the live-action Lilo and Stitch disrespects that entire tradition, history, and the original animation's messages as well.

The ways that humans have for expressing affection for each other are greater than sex and romance, and many of those acts that WEIRD people would classify as sexual or romantic are instead culturally appropriate expressions of affection. Because there's still not an underlying acceptance of the idea that people can be affectionate to each other without it being sexual, and extra so for people of the same perceived gender.

What we think of as local culture and tradition is global culture and tradition. We have just forgotten that things like food migrate and then integrate really well into wherever they land. Which is why you will occasionally have someone yelling that Italians of an era before the tomato migrated out of the Americas are not having marinara sauce with their pasta. The idea that there is only one human culture, and what we have are a bunch of local implementations and place-and-time specific manifestations of it, is really rather true, but because our memories and our records don't always persist over time, we forget that we have already done this before. Repeatedly.

Research into autism that has done less assuming the neurotypical is "normal" and the standard continues to find things that are classified as deficits and disorders are often strengths and consistencies, just at a different angle than the neurotypical one.

Claudette Colvin, who was getting arrested for not giving up a bus seat in a segregated South before Rosa Parks became the face of it, has died at 86 years of age.

( Murder most foul, an administration gone rogue, and techbros on the warpath inside )

Last for this entry, dressed as the pink ranger from the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers / Zyuranger, Martha Root demonstrated how she had gained control of white supremacist websites, had the members talk to chatbots, and then deleted the sites live during the talk.

A plea to start posting the snippets of our lives again, rather than trying to figure out what would be the best for the algorithm or withdrawing entirely from posting because we are trying not to chase the unsatisfiable algorithm. I think that will be an easier task on sites where there is no algorithm to game, but the difficulty of getting people to those sites is that they also need to have their friends decamp to a compatible network as well, and that's not necessarily an easy sell, even if someone wants to leave a toxic environment. (And, as has been well-documented in places like the Fediverse, for minorities, it's a question of leaving one toxic platform for another, and evaluating whether or not the controls on the new platform are good enough that they won't get subjected to more harassment getting through their filters or not.)

The ways that people are using chatbots as social and erotic companions, even though a fair number of them know they're chatbots. Which is the kind of future the techbros would like - interactions as event flags with characters that aren't human and don't have human needs or changes in mood.

And a method that presumably allows you to not have CoPilot or other "AI" features in your Windows 11 install, and sets things up so that they won't reinstall themselves, either.

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: ROZEN - Destati

shadowkat

Difficult, long, and tedious work week requiring a touch more patience than I wished to give it - not helped by the cold snap. Although my knees did appreciate it, since I need to ice them anyhow. Nor helped by issues with subways earlier in the week, resulting in more walking and more steps.

But it's Friday, finally! Thank god. And I've got a three day weekend - since we get Martin Luther King Day off - most people do in NYC.

I can sleep in. Rest my knee. And get some chores done. Also maybe a few watercolors.

Been entertaining myself with Buffy podcasts - which require little to no attention, and I find entertaining. Did learn a few things? ( Read more... )

It's really hard to know what is true and what isn't in this day and age. Information Age, my foot - more like Mis-Information Age.

***

Finally finished re-watching Hells Bells - I've mixed feelings about this episode. It's alas a Xander episode - which well pretty much tells you everything right there. That said - it's a mixed bag? When the story is focusing on the Scooby Gange or main leads, it's actually pretty good? But when it shifts to the twenty or so never-seen, rarely seen, and never to be seen again - ancillary characters - it loses focus. ( Read more... )

I realized today why I find this show so comforting and feel the need to write about it. It's central theme is "don't give up, life is painful and hard, but don't give up, the people you meet throughout it - make it worth it". I think that's why I love the later seasons - I find them oddly to be the most relatable.

**

PT went okay. He said that it's the muscles around the knee that are sore and hurting, because they are weak or strained, so to ice them and do the exercises.

**

I'm not enjoying the Angelica Huston Memoir as much as the others, partly because...I don't much like Angelica Huston? ( Read more... )

tvline_sytycd_feed

https://www.tvline.com/2078043/fire-country-showrunner-leaving-season-4-tia-napolitano-cbs/

Fire Country is getting a new chief behind the scenes: Showrunner Tia Napolitano is stepping down when Season 4 ends.

https://www.tvline.com/2078043/fire-country-showrunner-leaving-season-4-tia-napolitano-cbs/

chazzbanner

Watch on YouTube

pegkerr

I spent over an hour working on this collage without being able to quite pin down the name for it. Initially, I titled it 'Imbalance,' but that word didn't quite capture the ominousness of what I was trying to convey. Eventually, I decided upon 'Upheaval.'

I remarked to someone this week that I didn't envision the beginning of my retirement being quite like this.

Besides all the uncertainty over the usual issues at this time of life like 'what do I do with my time?' and 'what is my new budget going to be like?' there are other questions, like 'will my next door neighbor be arrested?' and 'is this neighborhood business open, or have all their employees been kidnapped?' and 'what are the chances that my car is going to get rammed by ICE?'

I'm not going to go into great depth about all the news events that this collage is reflecting. If you are not aware, the Twin Cities are under siege by the federal government. Constitutional rights are being absolutely ignored. Rather, the ICE agents cruising around the city are making a huge show of deliberately and flagrantly violating constitutional rights, apparently just to demonstrate that they can.

There are rumors flying around the city, and everyone is angry, stressed, and yes, afraid. Yet the city is pulling together, with people joining Signal groups to protect their neighbors, setting up patrols to guard schools, churches, and day care centers, and donating money and supplies to support immigrants in hiding from ICE. All these actions are like a lighthouse in the middle of a storm.

A stormy sea with a lighthouse, partially obscured by fog. A woman stands unsteadily on top of the waves, in three overlapping poses, arms flailing as if struggling for balance. A giant, ominous-looking kraken lurks partially below the surface of the waves, brandishing its tentacles threateningly, center right.

Upheaval

2 Upheaval

Click on the links to see the 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Current Mood: stressed

thistleingrey

Random link: We Were the Scenery (2025), a 15-minute documentary about the experiences of two of the background extras in Apocalypse Now (1979). It's written and produced by their child.

Coincidentally, Piecework magazine's newsletter recently had a link to a short essay on Hmong story cloths and the US NE---same cluster of ruptures, different segment.

Aditi Rao's review of Spinney's Proto and Scappettone's Poetry after Barbarism asserts mildly that "both books mobilize language, and the prospect of translingual communication, as their objects of study, with markedly different political ambitions and veneers," but there's so much thought and care amongst the review's remarks that I can't summarize. The review's title is "Against Babel: or, How to Talk to Strangers."

nnozomi posting in

guardian_learning

部首
心 part 18
惨, miserable; 惩, to punish; 惯, used to ( pinyin )
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=61

词汇
成人, adult; 构成, to constitute; 养成, to cultivate; 赞成, to agree ( pinyin )
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-4-word-list/

Guardian:
幸好我伤惯了, fortunately I'm used to being hurt
你们也都知道咱们特调处本来就是一个成人之美的地方, you all know our SID exists for the purpose of helping others

Me:
这样停车的话你要被惩罚了。
你已经成人了，不要太傻玩。

hrj

Back in September, on my podcast, I aired an interview with Karli Wurzelnbacher who had curated a museum exhibition on sculptor Emma Stebbins at the Heckscher Museum on Long Island. So one of the conjunction of excuses to make this trip out to the East Coast was a chance to actually see the exhibit. Yesterday I took one of those typically complex assortments of transit peculiar to NYC to get there and had a wonderful time viewing everything.

The Heckscher is quite a small space--just five rooms and all of them in use for the show. In addition to quite an assortment of Stebbins' sculpture, there were displays of her drawings, biographical information, and a large number of photographs of works that are no longer extant (or no longer locatable), especially those documented in a scrapbook that her sister had compiled for her.

There was also a good amount of space devoted to her partnership with actress Charlotte Cushman (the exhibit used the word "wife" to my delight), as well as the rest of the expatriate artist community in Rome that they were part of. There were sculptor's tools on display and a video showing the process of mocking up a clay model, creating a cast, then using that to transfer the shape to marble.

In addition to enjoying the show, I was able to meet Karli face-to-face (although I didn't think to get a selfie with her). All in all, a lovely little adventure.

tvline_sytycd_feed

https://www.tvline.com/2076071/most-exciting-fantasy-shows-premiering-2026/

Who needs reality when fantasy television provides all the thrills, chills, mayhem, and pizazz you'll ever need? Here's a batch of upcoming unreal programs.

https://www.tvline.com/2076071/most-exciting-fantasy-shows-premiering-2026/

trobadora

Running late again. Normal services should resume tomorrow!

Today's writing

More

fandomtrees work.

Tally

( Days 1-10 )

Day 11:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

daegaer,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 12:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 13:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 14:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

Day 15:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

Day 16:

china_shop,

trobadora

Let me know if I missed anyone! And remember you can drop in or out at any time. :)

aurumcalendula

Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: the true story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union agent at the heart of the Confederacy by Elizabeth R. Varon:

( Read more... )

Circle of Treason: a CIA account of Aldrich Ames and the men he betrayed by Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille:

( Read more... )

schneefink

I'm behind on household chores and fandom things (my end-of-year post, snowflake challenge etc.) and the next few weeks are going to be stressful because I have weekend classes again and other plans; and yet the past few days I've spent most of my spare time (and some time when I should have been asleep) reading the first 4.5 books of Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. I'd heard enough good things about it that I put a hold on the first two books immediately when my library got them, and when I was finished with them I immediately wanted to continue reading.
Unfortunately the ebook versions of books 3-7 are only available on amazon from what I've seen and I try to avoid giving them money when I can, so I joined the author's Patreon instead and am now reading the unedited versions of the other books. It's very hard to stop reading! There's always just one more thing I want to see how it goes, and then the next.

I enjoy the LitRPG and power-up fantasy aspects, but I think my favorite angle is the reality TV death game. Reminds me of the Hunger Games in that aspect, with bonus corporate politics in the background. I also like the characters, the main cast and the supporting cast, and I enjoy the crazy plans. Can't wait to see where it goes! ...except I have to because of chores and classes etc. etc. and I should also try to get enough sleep. Boo.

tvline_sytycd_feed

https://www.tvline.com/2077793/love-it-or-list-it-host-todd-talbot-part-wicked-movies/

The co-presenter of Love It or List It Vancouver has talents extending well beyond renovation reality shows. He's also in the background of multiple hit films.

https://www.tvline.com/2077793/love-it-or-list-it-host-todd-talbot-part-wicked-movies/

tvline_sytycd_feed

https://www.tvline.com/2073610/great-netflix-shows-nobody-talks-about-anymore/

Netflix's streaming catalogue is downright iconic and exhaustive. Here are 10 incredible shows on the platform that sadly just don't get mentioned nowadays.

https://www.tvline.com/2073610/great-netflix-shows-nobody-talks-about-anymore/

hamsterwoman

Some fannish catching up!

1)

fandomtrees still has 3 trees below the minimum number of 2 gifts, and is thus at risk of delaying reveals again (currently scheduled for Jan 17 reveals), with the decision on delaying to be made the morning of 1/17. Needy trees are mastershield's Tree (f:astro boy, f:balan wonderland, f:kingdom hearts); kalloway's Tree (f:brave nine, f:crossovers, f:fire emblem, f:granblue fantasy, f:gundam, f:kingdom of heroes, f:super robot heroes) whoremoantreatments' Tree (f:advance wars, f:bleach, f:hypnosis mic, f:kuroko no basket, f:pokemon, f:tales of berseria, f:the world ends with you). (List kept updated here.) All of these are open to fic, and the minimum fill for fic is only 100 words, if anyone knows these fandoms and can help out.

(My tree has above the minimum number of gifts but is here, and I’m eager to see what’s on it :)

2) I should’ve mentioned this earlier, but it’s been a crazy couple of weeks.

lunasariel is hosting a sync read of To Shape a Dragon’s Breath in her DW here. Currently it’s her, me, and

cyanmnemosyne reading along, but contrary to the name, we don’t actually have to be all synched up to participate, so if (like me) you’ve been meaning to read this book for a while, or if you’ve read it already and want to follow our impressions as we make progress through it, come join! I am currently just past halfway,

lunasariel is 10-20 chapters ahead of me, and Cyan has just recently started. (And yes, my thoughts on this book are ~50% on the chemistry. Actual Periodic Table of Elements chemistry, I mean, not chemistry between characters, although I’m enjoying that too.)

3) Snowflake catch up!

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

The problem with doing Snowflake every year for the last, uh… 10 years, I guess? – is that for repeated questions like this, which are about ME as opposed to about my fandoms or projects or objects, which can accumulate it is much harder to come up with something new to say! Both of these questions fall under that category, and so were more challenging than most for me to answer. But let’s see if I can come up with something without repeating myself.

Challenge #7: LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

I do want to stick to fandom-related things I like about myself for this one, so, hm. Last time I answered this question seems to be in 2017 (and my things were “good fannish role model for my children”, “thorough and detailed in talking about what I’m reading/watching”, and “conscientious beta”) and the first time in 2016 (my answers were “good fannish baba/matchmaker”, "committed to fannish crack”, and “conscientious about fandom participation”) – and I do still feel those things are all applicable to me and I still like them. But I’ve done a bunch of new things in the last 9 years, from attending conventions to paying attention to the Hugos to signing up for Yuletide, so let me focus on those new things and see if I can extract three new things I like about myself fannishly from them.

( things I like about myself viz conventions, fanfic, and Hugos )

Challenge #8: Talk about your creative process.

This is another one I’ve done before, in 2019 and in 2015, but looking at even the 2019 one, I talked about fannish poetry and graphics, but not about fannish prose/fanfic. So clearly that’s what I should talk about, but what IS my process?

( Fanfic process )

muccamukk

From

snickfic and

slippery_fish.

Go to your Works page on AO3, look at the tags, and see what the answers to these questions are. (Or any other site that has tags)

I'm going to go off both my fic journal (

feast_of_fanfic) and my AO3 page (

Muccamukk). The DW has a handful more fic, and a slightly different rating/tagging system, but should be roughly the same.

What rating do you write most fics under?
DW: Teen.
AO3: Teen and Up Audiences.

What are your top 3 fandoms?
DW: Band of Brothers, Marvel 616 & tie of Babylon 5 and The Pacific.
AO3: Band of Brothers, Marvel 616 (then several subcategories thereof), The Pacific.

What is your top character you write about?
DW: Don't tag for characters.
AO3: Richard Winters (BoB)

What are the 3 top pairings?
DW: Nixon/Winters (BoB), Steve/Tony (Marvel), Band of Brothers Rarepair.
AO3: Nixon/Winters (BoB), Steve/Tony (Marvel), Andy/Eddie (The Pacific).

What are the top 3 additional tags?
DW: Drabbles!, PWP, Canon-Era H/C.
AO3: Canon Era, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon.

Did any of this surprise you? e.g. what turned out to be your top tag.
Only giving each fic one genre each on DW skewed the tags much differently from AO3, for the last question. I've also posted a bunch of drabbles to DW that didn't make it to AO3, so that probably also moves the numbers (like tying B5 with The Pacific). If one includes HBO War and Marvel comics each as one fandom, it would go HBO War, Marvel Comics, Babylon 5.

It also leaves out some of my most popular fic, which are for fandoms I didn't write for as much, but got a couple one hit wonders that sailed to the top of my stats page.

(Any word on DW figuring out what's wrong with the AO3 user profile logo? I gather it's some kind of import problem.)

Code for anyone who wants to gank:

adrian_turtle

Is anyone I know going to Arisia this weekend? I'm thinking of going for a day but haven't decided which day. Masking is the only way I feel safe going to this kind of event, but masking also makes it harder to make a long relaxed day of it because I can't go out to a restaurant with half a dozen friends for 90 minutes in the middle of the day. Even so, I'd like to see people if that's possible.

adrian_turtle

We went to the Boston rally against ICE last Saturday. One of my study partners asked afterwards if it made me fired up with solidarity, and inspired to resist more strongly? Not really. Not this time. But my presence made the crowd a bit bigger, and I hope a bigger crowd inspired others incrementally more.

I saw a kid near the T station, on the edge of the crowd, and heard her ask, "Mommy, what's ab abol abolish?" She was of an age to be fairly new to reading, so she had to sound out the word on the "Abolish ICE" signs. Her mother said abolishing was when you got rid of something completely by making a law against it, like the abolition of slavery. It made me wonder about little kids tagging along when when Bostonians marched for abolition in the 19th century.

tvline_sytycd_feed

https://www.tvline.com/2077751/high-potential-cast-morgan-dad-abc/

We tackle the biggest questions from the week in TV: Chicago Med, Law & Order: SVU, High Potential, and much more!

https://www.tvline.com/2077751/high-potential-cast-morgan-dad-abc/

sanguinity

Still catching up on things I wrote in 2025, although I believe this is the last of them.

Most people who might care have seen it already, but for the sake of completeness: I wrote a Flight of the Heron story for the "Pomegaverse" square of Keep Fandom Weird Bingo.

What is Pomegaverse? According to Fanlore's page on Pomegaverse:

In these works, a human character experiences so much stress that they transform into a Pomeranian dog. They can only revert back to their human form if the stress is relieved via receiving love and affection from other people.

I haven't made a serious effort at the rest of that bingo card, but as soon as I saw that square, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it:

Form'd for Idleness and Ease

Keith & Ewen

Pomegaverse, Animal Transformation, Bad Things Always Happen to Keith, Let's Get That Man Some Affection For a Change, Or At Least a Mini-Vacay as a Beloved Lapdog

Captain Keith Windham's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day just got worse. Ewen, of course, is a perfect gentleman about it all.

Of course, this all demands an answer to the question of how the war proceeds if soldiers keep turning into lapdogs every time they get stressed out. (The Highland Charge continues to be effective -- perhaps even more so! Culloden... either gets that much horrific, or fizzles out for want of soldiers still standing.) I have no immediate plans to actually do this, but I am a little bit tempted to follow this mechanic through all five meetings of the book, just to see what happens.

draculareddit_feed

Posted by /u/glib-eleven

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dracula/comments/1qeos02/bram_stokers_dracula_3_of_4/

submitted by /u/glib-eleven
[link] [comments]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dracula/comments/1qeos02/bram_stokers_dracula_3_of_4/

rifftraxreddit_feed

Posted by /u/VikDamnedLee

https://www.reddit.com/r/Rifftrax/comments/1qeo2lb/grimtrax_returns_new_vod/

Like a comet streaking across the sky with a trail of suffering, ennui, and industrial puncture wounds behind it, GrimTrax Returns! Five shorts too grim to release individually, including one we recorded TWO YEARS AGO and held onto for just this moment.

What kind of sicko are you? Workplace accidents your thing? We’ve got a short that makes Shake Hands With Danger look like a Miss Rachel singalong. Or maybe you like watching a happy marriage descend into bitterness and ruin, like The Lockhorns but funny. Wanna see a railroad littered with dead kids? GOOD NEWS! Also, if you’re in the insanely specific demographic of “people who hate E.E. Cummings AND deer”, we’ve got a short that may be you grim Citizen Kane.

And then there’s one about making insanely creepy dolls out of dried apples that may just be the grimmest part of the whole experience.

Featuring grim host segments from Mike, Kevin, and Bill, GrimTrax Returns is here to make your day a wee bit grimmer and a whole lot funnier!

(Warning: It’s kinda grim…)

Written by: Mike Nelson, Conor Lastowka, Sean Thomason, Jason Miller, & Zach Shatzer

submitted by /u/VikDamnedLee
[link] [comments]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Rifftrax/comments/1qeo2lb/grimtrax_returns_new_vod/

tvline_sytycd_feed

https://www.tvline.com/2075003/blue-bloods-star-donnie-wahlberg-ate-most-food-reagan-family-dinners/

A dependable element of nearly every Blue Bloods episode was the Reagan family dinners. Which begs the question:

https://www.tvline.com/2075003/blue-bloods-star-donnie-wahlberg-ate-most-food-reagan-family-dinners/

dolorosa_12

I am absolutely flattened by work this week, and next week promises to be more of the same. It's the point in the academic year when all the Master's and PhD students have to hand in literature reviews and project proposals, and all of them suddenly panic and realise that the classes I taught them (carefully timetabled to coincide with the point at which they were meant to start work on their literature reviews and project proposals) actually contained crucial, useful information and they probably should have been paying more attention and doing the suggested follow-up activities while what I taught them was fresh in their minds. Because they haven't done this, they all, of course, contact me at once, now. It's good to be needed — I wouldn't have a job, otherwise — but I wish they didn't all need me so much and all at the same time.

Anyway, let's use another

snowflake_challenge prompt for the Friday open thread: Talk about your creative process.

I know a lot of you have already answered this in your own journals, so feel free to link to your posts in the comments rather than writing things out again. Or, answer in the comments if this is a brand new topic for you!

( My answer )

What about you?

beccaelizabeth

It's Friday and I haven't posted for a week so 👋

The news is not something I am having useful thoughts about so I keep ending up using the time travel button on my tumblr likes and sharing stuff from Winter Soldier era MCU fandom. Trouble is everyone seems convinced they're Cap no matter what. Exhausting and frustrating.

So I am spending most time in stories but not getting much read anyway.

Not great.

I listened a Big Finish Doctor Who box set, The Quin Dilemma.
https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-the-sixth-doctor-adventures-the-quin-dilemma-2873
I liked it. The 6th Doctor and companions from all over his time.
There's a bit in one episode where people are trying to figure out which Doctor is first and last in his own timeline, since they all look the same, and they're trying to put companions in order, so 6 goes 'it's quite simple' and lists off everyone he has travelled with so far and it is The Most Not Simple. People leave and come back and leave and come back and mix together in new sets and Peri ... I am not going to try and untangle whatever happened to Peri, it happened extensively and a lot.
Big Finish out there telling us not to worry about little things like linear time or the thing where logically people would on occasion be aging.
Which is fun.

I remember I liked the stories well enough but I could not at this point tell you the individual plots.
But with so many companion shenanigans to fit in I thought they did grand landing it.

Yesterday I finished reading Tanya Huff's Into the Broken Lands
and then went and got The Silvered by the same author off the book shelf, because that was a good read and in the absence of more of it I'll go around the shelf again.
I liked the way the different eras were woven together to show us an unfolding story for two sets of characters and then raise questions about knowledge and the keepers of it and the purpose of it, just by the contrast even before you got to the specifics of the ending.
There was one character who I started the book thinking was insufferable and ended the book thinking that at least the book agreed with me. Not subtle, but, consistently and clearly done.
Good thoughtful stuff, I reckon.

If I had magic I don't know what I would use it for.

I mean there's the whole Enchantment stack that fails on grounds of free will and democracy, but so many of the other spells only exist to do the same thing, change people's minds so they agree with you, but this time possibly because fireball.

Healing is an obvious good but I personally would have to make myself miserable to do any such thing.
Plus the spells for a Pathfinder style healer are adequate for half a dozen people in Pathfinder conditions, so real stuff like epidemics overwhelms the city's magic users every which way you do the maths, which is miserable. You'd have to save it for last resort stuff or something. People would have to choose how to ration it. Unless you could train at least one in six people to do it. Which even Pathfinder does not.

Magic items are good. Clean water. Food supplies.
... but again the numbers matter. Enough for the party is... small.

The RPGs I've bought so many of somehow do not cover the sort of solutions I would find appropriate in as much detail as they cover new and interesting polearms. Makes it tricky.

But like, so many fictional magic users only tackle fictional problems, possibly with a metaphor layer on. Real problems scale up beyond most magical solutions.

I reread The Girl Thing That Went Out For Sushi the other day. Reminded me that one thing people would definitely do with magic is use Polymorph to live the dream.

Also I understand the game mechanical reasons for spells that wear off, but for shape shifting spells that is actually two spells in a row, equally difficult. Wearing off just does not convince me.

People would pick RPG races to turn into but that would only be the beginning.

Sufficiently advanced science or sufficiently advanced magic converge on this one.

But the social acceptance of the fundamental fact that things change when you make them change?
May lag more than a little.

Think I'll go back to reading the books.

rifftraxreddit_feed

Posted by /u/Bortron86

https://www.reddit.com/r/Rifftrax/comments/1qemf3s/its_incredible_that_someone_made_a_movie_with/

It's incredible that someone made a movie with more car parking scenes than the whole James Nguyenverse put together. Not enough stock options, though.

Also, has anyone noticed that the guys seem more relaxed on riffs from the last few years than earlier ones? There's a lot more laughter between them. Is that laughs being left in rather than edited out, or are they just really on a roll and loving it?

submitted by /u/Bortron86
[link] [comments]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Rifftrax/comments/1qemf3s/its_incredible_that_someone_made_a_movie_with/

tvline_sytycd_feed

https://www.tvline.com/2077650/the-madison-release-date-cast-trailer-yellowstone-spinoff/

Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell lead The Madison, the next Montana-set drama from Taylor Sheridan, premiering on Paramount+ in March. Get a first look.

https://www.tvline.com/2077650/the-madison-release-date-cast-trailer-yellowstone-spinoff/

tvline_sytycd_feed

https://www.tvline.com/2077069/elsbeth-season-3-episode-11-preview-hamish-linklater/

Elsbeth Tascioni will go up against Hamish Linklater ('Midnight Mass') when the show resumes Season 3 - get an exclusive first look at the winter premiere.

https://www.tvline.com/2077069/elsbeth-season-3-episode-11-preview-hamish-linklater/

umadoshi

As so often happens, I had several things I meant to post about and now they've mostly evaporated.

But I do know my tabs situation is staggering out of control. (Reliably over 1700 for at least the last couple of weeks.) Odds that I'll get to replying to all the posts I've read but opened in a tab to reply to later on...are currently very slim.

Have a link: Sarah Kurchak wrote about Heated Rivalry for TIME recently: "Heated Rivalry Handles Autism With Love, Care, and a Touch of Awkwardness".

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Dessa — Rothko (live for The Current)

spikedluv

9-1-1: For some reason I didn’t care to watch the first ep back when it aired, but I’m all caught up now! ( spoilers )

Best Medicine: I’ve seen the first two eps and I’m enjoying it so far! (Though I didn’t realize it was an adaptation of a Brit show, Doc Martin. ( spoilers )

tvline_sytycd_feed

https://www.tvline.com/2076800/why-bobs-burgers-more-caustic-early-episodes/

Early Bob's Burgers episodes portrayed Bob Belcher with a much sharper edge. Here's why the show gradually softened him over time.

https://www.tvline.com/2076800/why-bobs-burgers-more-caustic-early-episodes/

lsanderson

ICE ( Read more... )

Giving Trump the Nobel peace prize medal is ‘absurd’, say Norwegian politicians
US president criticised for accepting medal awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado
Miranda Bryant Nordic correspondent
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/16/maria-corina-machado-giving-trump-nobel-peace-prize-medal-absurd-say-norwegian-politicians

At the root of all our problems stands one travesty: politicians’ surrender to the super-rich
George Monbiot
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/16/super-rich-inequality-politicians-extreme-wealth ( Read more... )

thewayne

Sigh.

So in addition to memory, solid-state drives, high-end video cards, now they're eating up hard drives. Some drives up up 60% in THE LAST FOUR MONTHS, according to a report from a German news source.

From the article: "The trend is also visible in the U.S. A Seagate IronWolf drive with just 4TB capacity would have set you back $70 in early 2023; that drive is now $99. Similarly, the 8TB model is $199, when it would have been priced as low as $130 a couple of years ago. Western Digital's Red Plus alternative is now $175 for 8TB. The toughest blow of all? Seagate's iconic BarraCuda 24TB drive, which we've seen cost as little as $239 during sales events, now costs a whopping $499 on Amazon, and you'll be buying it from a third party. Newegg doesn't even have it in stock."

Apparently there is a knock-on effect of people now building PCs with DDR4 memory instead of the latest DDR5 because all of that memory is being gobbled up by AI. So now older motherboards are in higher demands? AI server boards are specialized beasts and aren't the same thing that you're going to put in your gaming rig.

Apparently the hard disk drives are used to store the bulk data for training AI models, then all the operations are carried out on SSD arrays for speed. Makes sense, from a computer operations standpoint.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/hard-drive-prices-have-surged-by-an-average-of-46-percent-since-september-iconic-24tb-seagate-barracuda-now-usd500-as-ai-claims-another-victim

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/01/16/1332213/hard-drive-prices-have-surged-by-an-average-of-46-since-september

swingandswirl

RL and my

fffx fic contrive to eat all my spoons, and next week does not portend to be any better, but here, have this utter delight of an ad:

Watch on YouTube

thewayne

This is one specific manufacturer, WHIIL. Researchers found that the Bluetooth channel, used normally for configuring the wheelchair upon delivery and for service, was completely unsecure. No authentication, no certificates, no nothing.

The researchers were able to take complete control of the wheelchair, making it run at top speed (5 MPH) and sent it careening down stairs.

One comment on Bruce Schneier's blog commented about OpenBSD, a Unix fork that prides itself on being very secure. They do not support Bluetooth at all. When asked about it, they said that the Bluetooth stack cannot be secured. I'm surprised that something like a wheelchair interface isn't secured with just a panel and a USB cable. Simple controlled physical access. The scariest part is that they can now do Bluetooth well over half a mile, both send and receive - so theoretically hacks like this and transactions can be phished and the baddies are no where near you.

https://www.securityweek.com/researchers-expose-whill-wheelchair-safety-risks-via-remote-hacking/

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/01/hacking-wheelchairs-over-bluetooth.html

anneapocalypse

Fandom: Final Fantasy XIV
Rating: Mature
Archive Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Urianger Augurelt/Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn, Urianger Augurelt & Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn, Ardbert & Urianger Augurelt, Unrealized Ardbert/Urianger Augurelt, Pre-Urianger Augurelt/Warrior of Light
Characters: Urianger Augurelt, Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn, Ardbert Hylfyst, Elidibus, Unukalhai, Tataru Taru, Minfilia Warde, Warrior of Light, Dewlala Dewla, Y'shtola Rhul, Yugiri Mistwalker, Thancred Waters, J'Rhoomale, Blanhaerz, Lamimi, Naillebert, Haneko Burneko
Additional Tags: Grief/Mourning, Angst, Religion, Isolation, Loneliness, Patch 3.4: Soul Surrender Spoilers (Final Fantasy XIV), Elezen Warrior of Light, Female Warrior of Light, Canon-Typical Violence, Guilt, Emotional Repression, Child Neglect, Childhood Memories, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Series: With Lilies and With Laurel
Length: 30,188 / 92,000
Chapter: 5/15

Summary:

Heartbroken after the loss of his dearest companion, Urianger labors to save two worlds in which he has never felt more alone.

Notes:

If you're new here, please start with Chapter 1!

Final Fantasy XIV is owned by Square Enix. This is a non-commercial work of fanfiction.

( Read on AO3 )

( ...or below! )

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

tozka

🎬 Wake Up Dead Man: Directed by Rian Johnson. With Daniel Craig, Josh O'Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin. Detective Benoit Blanc teams up with an earnest young priest to investigate a perfectly impossible crime at a small-town church with a dark history. 🔗

What I liked: the cast; how the director/writer obviously had an itch to scratch re: Christianity and the State of Things Today and really wanted to Say Something; how it's structured like an Agatha Christie novel almost exactly, or at least some old fashioned one (which in that context the plot pacing makes perfect sense). I also liked the makeup/wardrobe, which didn't glam up any of the actors except maybe Josh Brolin.

What I didn't like: the overly long introduction sequence which focused on characters that made barely any impact and weren't even good red herrings; the people who need to hear about the kinder Christianity stuff wouldn't watch this movie anyway so it ends up kind of like, well...preaching to the choir.

Unbeknownst to me, my parents were watching it on the same day-- but it turns out that we liked/disliked almost the exact opposite things. They loved the long intro!

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mirlacca

Ashley McConnell

December 2025

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Page Summary

spikedluv - The Day in Spikedluv (Friday, Jan 16)
tropicsbear - (no subject)
ciexmod in consent_issues_exchange - Returning PHs 7, 23, 24, 25, 33
silveradept - This year begins with an increase in atrocity and destruction - Early January 02026
shadowkat - Friday...finally...now to sleep and dream of other days
tvline_sytycd_feed - Fire Country Showrunner To Exit After Season 4
chazzbanner - some days just need a little Bill Nighy
pegkerr - 2026 52 Card Project: Week 2: Upheaval
thistleingrey - some links
nnozomi in guardian_learning - 第五年第七天
hrj - Museum Visit
tvline_sytycd_feed - The Most Exciting Fantasy TV Shows Coming In 2026
trobadora - Write Every day 2026: January, Day 16
aurumcalendula - Two books about spies
schneefink - Dungeon Crawlers: kill, kill, kill
tvline_sytycd_feed - Love It Or List It Host Todd Talbot Was Part Of The Biggest Musical Of The 2020s
tvline_sytycd_feed - 10 Great Netflix Shows Nobody Talks About Anymore
hamsterwoman - Snowflake (days 7-8) and other fannish catching up
muccamukk - Fanworks Stats Meme
adrian_turtle - Arisia
adrian_turtle - Mommy, what's abolition?
tvline_sytycd_feed - TVLine Asks: Who Will Play High Potential Patriarch? Will SVU Mole Turn #TeamBenson? Did Chicago Med
sanguinity - Heron fic: Form'd for Idleness and Ease
draculareddit_feed - BRAM STOKERS DRACULA 3 of 4
rifftraxreddit_feed - GrimTrax Returns! New VOD
tvline_sytycd_feed - The Blue Bloods Star Who Ate The Most Food During The Reagan Family Dinners
dolorosa_12 - Friday open thread: your creative process
beccaelizabeth - (no subject)
rifftraxreddit_feed - It's incredible that someone made a movie with more car parking scenes than the whole James Nguyenve
tvline_sytycd_feed - Taylor Sheridan's The Madison Sets Paramount+ Premiere: First Look At Kurt Russell, Michelle Pfeiffe
tvline_sytycd_feed - Elsbeth Goes Toe-To-Toe With Hamish Linklater In Midseason Premiere (Exclusive First Look)
umadoshi - A very insubstantial post, but hey, there's a Heated Rivalry link
spikedluv - TV Talk: 9-1-1 & Best Medicine
tvline_sytycd_feed - Why The Lead Of Bob's Burgers Was More 'Caustic' In The Hit Show's Early Episodes
lsanderson - 2026.01.16
thewayne - Thank you, AI data centers! Now conventional hard drive prices are up 46%!
swingandswirl - Proof of life post
thewayne - Security researchers hack electric wheelchair via Bluetooth
anneapocalypse - [FFXIV Fic] Gentle Dark, Chapter 5: And So It Tips
tozka - watched: wake up dead man (2026)

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