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Tuesday, January 27th, 2026 11:00 pm
Bloods results from Friday afternoon came in. ( Read more... )
Tuesday, January 27th, 2026 12:00 pm
- 1. The behavioral cost of personalized pricing
- (tags:business psychology shopping )
- 2. Television is 100 years old today
- (tags:TV history technology )
- 3. More Brits now watch YouTube than the BBC
- (tags:BBC YouTube )
- 4. Elden Ring! Vs! Nietzsche!
- (tags:games video )
- 5. A judge has ruled that RuneScape gold pieces are real property, which is bad news for the ex-dev accused of stealing 705 billion of them
- (tags:crime law intellectual_property UK games )
- 6. The mountain that weighed the Earth
- (tags:history physics mountains earth )
- 7. Nobody Likes Ice (as told by meteorologists)
- (tags:usa politics fascism video funny viaKalimac weather ice )
- 8. How they fix potholes in Cambridgeshire
- (tags:roads cambridge )
Tags:
Monday, January 26th, 2026 05:47 pm
Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!
Dear friends (mostly, but not all, on Dreamwidth) who...
... are really enjoying that ice hockey series
... are really enjoying playing ice hockey themselves
... are really looking forward to the Winter Olympics
... are reading that book that everyone is reading
... are reading that book that everyone read three years ago
... are reading books that nobody's read for a hundred years
... are reading things I wrote when I could string more than ten minutes together at a time
... are knee-deep in an obscure spin-off of something I saw once
... are singing or playing
... are listening to other people sing or play
... are going out and eating delicious things
... are cooking delicious things for other people to eat
... are going to interesting places and seeing interesting wildlife and sharing pictures
... are doing small things (or big things) in pursuit of a better world
... I am really enjoying reading about your enjoyment and activity, though I never manage to comment as often as I'd like. Thank you for keeping me in touch with the fandom world!
TALK ABOUT A COMMUNITY SPACE YOU LIKE. It doesn’t need to be your favorite, or the one where you spend the most time (although it certainly can be). Maybe it’s even one that you’ve barely visited. But talk about that space and how it helps support fannish community.
Having talked mostly about Dreamwidth above, I'm going to go super literal here and talk about the bandstand in my home town. It's set at the centre of a park next the river, and every summer Sunday afternoon a different brass band from one of the surrounding towns and villages turns up to give a free concert. Programme-wise, you always know more or less what kind of thing you're going to get: a march or two, some film music, an arrangement of some classic rock, and so on, but since it's never advertised in advance you don't know the specifics. There's always a mixed audience: people who know it's happening and have turned up deliberately; friends of the band; people who were just wandering past and stop to listen; kids playing on the slides. Some people stop for a few minutes and then move on; some stay for the whole thing.
I love the energy of live music, and it's so good to have something that's so very relaxed, so very - literally - open.
Dear friends (mostly, but not all, on Dreamwidth) who...
... are really enjoying that ice hockey series
... are really enjoying playing ice hockey themselves
... are really looking forward to the Winter Olympics
... are reading that book that everyone is reading
... are reading that book that everyone read three years ago
... are reading books that nobody's read for a hundred years
... are reading things I wrote when I could string more than ten minutes together at a time
... are knee-deep in an obscure spin-off of something I saw once
... are singing or playing
... are listening to other people sing or play
... are going out and eating delicious things
... are cooking delicious things for other people to eat
... are going to interesting places and seeing interesting wildlife and sharing pictures
... are doing small things (or big things) in pursuit of a better world
... I am really enjoying reading about your enjoyment and activity, though I never manage to comment as often as I'd like. Thank you for keeping me in touch with the fandom world!
TALK ABOUT A COMMUNITY SPACE YOU LIKE. It doesn’t need to be your favorite, or the one where you spend the most time (although it certainly can be). Maybe it’s even one that you’ve barely visited. But talk about that space and how it helps support fannish community.
Having talked mostly about Dreamwidth above, I'm going to go super literal here and talk about the bandstand in my home town. It's set at the centre of a park next the river, and every summer Sunday afternoon a different brass band from one of the surrounding towns and villages turns up to give a free concert. Programme-wise, you always know more or less what kind of thing you're going to get: a march or two, some film music, an arrangement of some classic rock, and so on, but since it's never advertised in advance you don't know the specifics. There's always a mixed audience: people who know it's happening and have turned up deliberately; friends of the band; people who were just wandering past and stop to listen; kids playing on the slides. Some people stop for a few minutes and then move on; some stay for the whole thing.
I love the energy of live music, and it's so good to have something that's so very relaxed, so very - literally - open.
Tags:
Monday, January 26th, 2026 03:00 pm
In a slightly more sensible world this would be a perfect time for the One Nation/Moderate Conservatives to say "Thank goodness all of the far right monsters have left the party, time to pull the party back towards the center".
But I'm not convinced there are more than a few of them left.
But I'm not convinced there are more than a few of them left.
Monday, January 26th, 2026 12:00 pm
- 1. United Nations Declares That the World Has Entered an Era of 'Global Water Bankruptcy'
- (tags:water environment doom )
- 2. Why Minnesota Can't Do More to Stop ICE (Democratic lawmakers have few options that wouldn't trigger something like civil war.)
- (tags:civilwar usa politics )
- 3. The Lego Pokémon Line Shows Toys Are Only for Rich Adults Now
- (tags:lego pokemon toys business children )
- 4. LED lighting (350-650nm) undermines human visual performance unless supplemented by wider spectra (400-1500nm+) like daylight
- (tags:light vision doom )
- 5. What the world can learn from Paris's cycling revolution
- (tags:bicycles Paris transport cities environment )
- 6. Can South Cambridgeshire council get its work done in four days?
- (tags:work working_hours )
Tags:
Sunday, January 25th, 2026 09:59 pm
Reading. ( Scalzi, Tufte, Duncan )
Writing. Introduction continues to take shape. Word count hasn't gone up much, but that's partly because I am doing a reasonable job of Whacking Down A Bunch Of Words and then reassessing and deleting...
Listening. More of The Hidden Almanac. I continue to fret about not keeping super great track of it, which is in part because I seem to be extremely prone to going to sleep if it winds up on in the car...
Playing. We are finding an Exploders Inkulinati run alarmingly straightforward. Learning Continues.
Sudoku also continues to eat my brain. :|
Cooking. Dinner tonight included: another attempt at the Roti King cabbage poriyal, this time with more coconut, which I think has worked v well; a... loose attempt at a generous interpretation of Dishoom's gunpowder potatoes (no lime, no spring onion yet, no leaf coriander, not new potatoes...); and some pomegranate molasses-tamarind-yoghurt-chaat masala goop to sit some paneer in.
Earlier in the week I ticked a couple more things off the Cook (Almost) All Of East project (kung pao cauliflower; mushroom bao); this evening I have also had a first stab at recreating the Leon spiced tahini hot chocolate, which was Very Acceptable.
Eating. Finally managed to get a meal at the Viewpoint restaurant at Whipsnade (we keep not going at a time when it's open); mildly disappointed by the sourdough pizza, probably because I have a vague memory of a previous incarnation having aspirations to Fancy Restaurant, which I think the current set-up doesn't. Still v pleasant to eat food I didn't cook sat looking out over the Downs, though.
Exploring. ZOO.
Growing. I do not understand where the sciarid flies keep coming from but I am so, so, so over them. I am SO over them. WHY is the lithops container SUDDENLY FULL OF THEM.
That issue aside: lemongrass continues to have Leafs! If (if!) it keeps going like this I'm going to wind up needing to dispose of a bunch of plants via Freecycle/Freegle, goodness. Physalis still not doing anything visible. Ancho chillis almost but not quite All The Way Ripe.
It is almost certainly time to start sowing More Things but I think perhaps I will hold off until after I've had a chance to apply some nematodes...
Tags:
Sunday, January 25th, 2026 08:45 pm
Grant someone's wish from Challenge #5.
I answered a couple of requests for recommendations, and am copying my answers here for reference.
1. for someone who wanted to hear from people forty and up about shopping for clothes:
I hit forty last year, and what I've done is to keep on experimenting until I find something that works - whether that's a shape, a colour, a manufacturer - and then keep on experimenting with that. What that looks like depends very much on circumstances - at the moment I have quite a lot of unscheduled time and my small town has a lot of charity shops, so I'm mostly buying things second-hand and donating them back if they don't end up working. But when I was working full-time I did a lot more internet shopping. (Svaha and Joanie were what worked for me then, for what it's worth.)
I had a most illuminating conversation recently with a group of friends, most of whom like Seasalt. I said that Seasalt ought to work for me but never quite does, but that Fat Face is pretty reliable. Interestingly, most of the Seasalt fans said that Fat Face never quite works for them. I take from this the lesson that even makes that appear very similar at first glance will be more or less suited to different groups of people, so it's worth keeping on looking.
I also like the Who Wears Who blog for thoughtful prompts on style and experimentation with same.
2. replying to someone who wanted to talk about femslash
Femslash! Here are three of my favourite books with canon femslash ships:
- my oldest - The Count of Monte Cristo, a rambling but enjoyable French doorstopper tale of revenge, appeared from 1844 to 1846 and has canon femslash. And no bury your gays! (Obvious warning: it is, of course, very much Of Its Time.)
- my newest - I've just finished The Priory of the Orange Tree. Will it be one of my favourites of all time? Probably not, but it was a lot of fun - an ambitious fantasy novel that attempts to put a valiant number of belief systems and all the dragon lore on the page. And yes, canon femslash.
- the one that feels like it was written just for me - the Alpennia series by Heather Rose Jones. It includes many of my favourite tropes (fictional European country, swashbuckling, complicated power dynamics) and weaves religious practice into the way the magic works in a way that I've rarely seen done so effectively. And, for a third time, canon femslash.
Tags:
Sunday, January 25th, 2026 07:35 pm
Went to cinema yesterday to see The History of Sound. I saw a review of it months ago, when I think it was doing rounds at festivals, that suggested it was a bit dry. I didn't find it dry as such, but did feel it did some jumps between its various time periods that I struggled to follow. And perhaps both main characters, Lionel and David, could have done with a little more depth. But it was good enough to spend a Saturday early evening with.
Earlier this month, the local Vue showed Labyrinth as a 30th anniversary special, and I went to see it. I wasn't entirely sure if I'd ever seen it before, and I was warned that it might seem a bit creepy. And yes, parts of it are creepy, but I found it better and more imaginative than I had expected. David Bowie's goblin king, looking very much like an 1980s big-hair rockstar, looked rather incongruous, which probably goes on to show how certain things feel dated sooner than others.
On BBC iPlayer, rather than at cinema, I watched the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express, which I thought I must have seen before, and where the investigating seemed to be proceeding at a rather snappier pace than I remember from the book or the 2017 film.
Also on BBC iPlayer, rewatched The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert for the first time in years and found it still so good.
Finally, on BFI Player, Eismayer, an Austrian film about a closeted army trainer whose life changes when he meets an openly gay young soldier.
Earlier this month, the local Vue showed Labyrinth as a 30th anniversary special, and I went to see it. I wasn't entirely sure if I'd ever seen it before, and I was warned that it might seem a bit creepy. And yes, parts of it are creepy, but I found it better and more imaginative than I had expected. David Bowie's goblin king, looking very much like an 1980s big-hair rockstar, looked rather incongruous, which probably goes on to show how certain things feel dated sooner than others.
On BBC iPlayer, rather than at cinema, I watched the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express, which I thought I must have seen before, and where the investigating seemed to be proceeding at a rather snappier pace than I remember from the book or the 2017 film.
Also on BBC iPlayer, rewatched The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert for the first time in years and found it still so good.
Finally, on BFI Player, Eismayer, an Austrian film about a closeted army trainer whose life changes when he meets an openly gay young soldier.
Tags:
Sunday, January 25th, 2026 09:15 am
The children pick their noses in front of infinity.
Original
is here on Pixelfed.scot.
Sunday, January 25th, 2026 12:00 pm
- 1. Google won't stop replacing news headlines with terrible AI
- (tags:Google news headlines AI OhForFucksSake )
- 2. Israeli agricultural exports face looming 'collapse' as world rejects products over Gaza genocide
- (tags:Israel trade fruit gaza )
- 3. A very short piece of fantasy. One of the few things I've ever read that feel like Terry Pratchett.
- (tags:fantasy funny short_story )
Tags:
Sunday, January 25th, 2026 08:42 am
Woke up at 6:30 and it took me ten minutes to wake up enough to realise it's Sunday and my alarm would not be going off at 7. By which point I was too awake to get back to sleep.
Tags:
Saturday, January 24th, 2026 11:32 pm
for a Treat. and we saw (highlights edition):
- the baby white rhino!!! three and a half weeks old, nose still not pointy, ridiculous little ear tufts; at one point got startled and did a tiny canter, and at another point was subsided into the straw pile with its eyes closed and its ears doing intermittent sleepy waggles
- the baby giraffes!!! two of them, both with TONGUES and both (obviously) much much taller than us
- ostriches doing A Gentle Jog, and also flapping their wings about a bunch
- The Pygmy Hippo (who also at one point got startled and GALUMPHED about it)
- the New Tapir, who is not a Common Hippos
- a CHEETAH (who then decided everything was Too Loud and it was going to slope off to the private paddocks thank you very much)
- The Flamingoes, who were almost all asleep; majority were on two legs not one, and it was Immediately Apparent from watching the one-legged sleepy flamingoes swaying enthusiastically that this was on account of The Wind
- Medium Elephant once again became Very Startled, made a Loud Noise With Her Face, and needed reassuring by All Her Grown-Ups
- baby giraffes (again)
- wolverines go LOLLOP, and
- A Penguin Pedicure (and lots of porpoising)
(Many other good things included Running Creatures, a very muddy tiger, the sleepy bongos, a baby monkey bum, the ponies labelled Lesser Rhea, a selection of sheep, and a sleepy African Wild Dog.)
The weather was extremely cooperative. I am very very glad we managed this outing. (And then I fell asleep listening to The Hidden Almanac in the car on the way home...)
Tags:
Saturday, January 24th, 2026 12:00 pm
- 1. Campaign to counter transphobes pressuring the Council of Europe
- (tags:LGBT transgender politics Europe )
- 2. Finalists :: Comedy Pet Photography Awards
- (tags:pets animals cute funny photos )
- 3. Psychologists develop method to quantify 'toxic masculinity' in men (about 3% of the population are *really* awful)
- (tags:men psychology patriarchy )
- 4. Katy Perry's Friends Skeptical Of Alleged Powerful Boyfriend Who Lives In Canada
- (tags:relationships celebrity satire funny Canada )
- 5. Science Is Drowning in AI Slop
- (tags:ai research doom OhForFucksSake )
- 6. Cancer might protect against Alzheimer's — this protein helps explain why
- (tags:cancer alzheimers )
- 7. Who wants to be Trad-Friends?
- (tags:funny friendship )
- 8. 45 sanctioned Russian tankers passed through the Channel since UK 'crackdown'
- (tags:UK Russia trade )
- 9. Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots
- (tags:exams AI university France viaFanf )
- 10. New solar-powered lighting improves safety and sustainability in Edinburgh's parks
- (tags:solarpower park Edinburgh )
Tags:
- ai,
- alzheimers,
- animals,
- canada,
- cancer,
- celebrity,
- cute,
- doom,
- edinburgh,
- europe,
- exams,
- france,
- friendship,
- funny,
- lgbt,
- links,
- men,
- ohforfuckssake,
- park,
- patriarchy,
- pets,
- photos,
- politics,
- psychology,
- relationships,
- research,
- russia,
- satire,
- solarpower,
- trade,
- transgender,
- uk,
- university,
- viafanf
Friday, January 23rd, 2026 03:37 pm
Big Mood (Board)
CHOOSE SOMETHING YOU LOVE AND CREATE A MINI MOOD COLLECTION OF THREE (or more) ITEMS THAT EVOKE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT IT. You don’t have to limit yourself to visual media, or collect the items into a special format like a square (though you can if you’d like).
I've never done a digital moodboard (have done physical collages, back in the day) and this sounded fun, if a little challenging to manage with limited laptop time. As I've been burbling about The Prisoner of Zenda quite a bit recently, I thought I'd stick with that. All the images came from Wikimedia Commons.
I can never make DW images play nicely, so I'm just sticking this under a cut and hoping for the best. I hope it doesn't come out too huge!
( Read more... )
Tags:
Friday, January 23rd, 2026 12:00 pm
- 1. Greens take Reform UK seat in first of its kind win (44% to 35%)
- (tags:GreenParty politics UK )
- 2. Hundreds of fraudulent AI citations in scientific papers
- (tags:ai fraud research )
- 3. Tory Councillors Say They Are Being Offered Jobs And Seats To Defect To Reform
- (tags:UK politics )
- 4. In Europe, Wind and Solar Overtook Fossil Fuels in 2025
- (tags:renewables Europe GoodNews )
Tags:
- ai,
- europe,
- fraud,
- goodnews,
- greenparty,
- links,
- politics,
- renewables,
- research,
- uk
Thursday, January 22nd, 2026 10:56 pm
- Saw the Child! Was given a Very Important Solar System Biscuit.
- Successfully slogged through a Whole Entire Exercise Routine, thanks be to company, and only tried to fall over for balance reasons rather than presyncope reasons. The Socks Continue Good. (We shall leave aside the part where my watch firmly told me I should start winding down for bed right before I began it...)
- A has indulged me to the tune of staying up late (post-wiggles and once we have finished our takeaway, which we have) so that the bread I did not manage to bake earlier in the day will be Ready To Be My Breakfast.
- Brain was willing to put down sudoku and actually read some book today! I am a bit closer to finishing a reread and embarking on the new thing!
- It feels like I might actually be able to fall asleep in reasonable time today. Goodnight. <3
Thursday, January 22nd, 2026 09:55 pm
After a grey and rainy day (week, really), I wasn't actually sure I'd find the motivation to go out, but I did do it. And the concert involved some wonderful singing and playing of the Concert Hall organ, but it felt very choppy, even when it seemed the intention was to move smoothly from one piece to the next, at least some of the time.
I'd like to go to more of the Classical Music series concerts, but I keep finding they're on days I cannot do or I'm not so interested in whatever's on the programme. Although I realised during the interval when I checked the dates that I might be able to do a Tuesday one that I'd thought I cannot do because of the German classes, but it appears to fall in the break between terms 2 and 3, so maybe I can do it after all. But that's April, I can wait a while before I buy tickets. There's also one in May that's currently on my maybe list.
Buses home were a bit annoying: just missed one, the tracking said the next one would be in 3 minutes. It was a very long three minutes, more like ten or twelve. Walking home might have been faster after all if I'd started walking as soon as I saw I missed the earlier bus.
I'd like to go to more of the Classical Music series concerts, but I keep finding they're on days I cannot do or I'm not so interested in whatever's on the programme. Although I realised during the interval when I checked the dates that I might be able to do a Tuesday one that I'd thought I cannot do because of the German classes, but it appears to fall in the break between terms 2 and 3, so maybe I can do it after all. But that's April, I can wait a while before I buy tickets. There's also one in May that's currently on my maybe list.
Buses home were a bit annoying: just missed one, the tracking said the next one would be in 3 minutes. It was a very long three minutes, more like ten or twelve. Walking home might have been faster after all if I'd started walking as soon as I saw I missed the earlier bus.
Thursday, January 22nd, 2026 12:00 pm
- 1. Changing gender in the UK involves a legal declaration that you will live as the gender you are changing to. With legal consequences if you don't.
- (tags:law UK gender transgender LGBT )
- 2. Prolonged air pollution linked to increase of incurable muscle-wasting diseases
- (tags:pollution disease )
- 3. Six key takeaways from the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry (cover-ups leading to patient deaths)
- (tags:scotland hospital OhForFucksSake death )
- 4. MAGA's 'Manifest Destiny' Coalition Has Arrived - "It's up to us to keep pushing for the orderly governance of the world via American imperialism"
- (tags:usa politics OhForFucksSake )
- 5. Comic-Con Bans AI Art After Artist Pushback
- (tags:ai art comics )
- 6. Anti-trans 'data vandalism' damages scientific research, study finds
- (tags:LGBT research bigotry transgender gender )
- 7. When the United Kingdom annexed a north Atlantic island (and what they might do with it)
- (tags:scotland uk politics history funny )
Tags:
Wednesday, January 21st, 2026 11:11 pm
Back in November I made a ridiculously overengineered parsnip risotto, as a way of dipping a toe into my next cookbook project. I said at the time that it was very tasty, and also I was unlikely to ever make it again.
