Dance the Eagle to Sleep by Marge Piercy
2026-02-22 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicoll
Can America's well-financed, highly-experienced, heavily-armed war machine hope to prevail against a numerically insignificant, poorly-armed, American teen movement?
Dance the Eagle to Sleep by Marge Piercy
1 John 4:18
2026-02-22 12:00 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
votd_feed“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”
Brought to you by BibleGateway.com. Copyright (C) . All Rights Reserved.
Brought to you by BibleGateway.com. Copyright (C) . All Rights Reserved.
foray
2026-02-22 12:00 ammerriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 22, 2026 is:
foray • \FOR-ay\ • noun
A foray is an initial and often hesitant attempt to do something in a new or different field or area of activity, as in “the novelist’s foray into nonfiction.” In martial contexts, foray means “a sudden or irregular invasion or attack for war or spoils.”
// The professional wrestler’s surprise foray into ballet was at first met with skepticism, but he eventually proved himself a dancer of grace and poise.
Examples:
“Bryan Escareño’s foray into fashion was the result of happenstance. In 2018, the designer, who was born and raised in Venice, California, bought a green vintage Singer sewing machine at a garage sale determined to learn to make the perfect pair of denim pants. … He began honing his sewing skills, eventually crafting cut-and-sew flannel shirts that caught the eye of his colleagues at LA’s Wasteland, a high-end resale boutique.” — Celia San Miguel, USA Today, 3 Dec. 2025
Did you know?
For centuries, foray referred only to a sudden or irregular invasion or attack, but in the late 19th century it began to venture into gentler semantic territory. While the newer sense of foray still involves a trek into a foreign territory, the travel is figurative: when you make this kind of foray, you dabble in an area, occupation, or pastime that’s new to you. Take the particularly apt example (stay tuned) of mushroom hunting. The likely ancestor of foray is an Anglo-French word referring to the violent sort who do invasion forays, but that word could also refer to a forager—that is, one who wanders in search of food. (Forage has the same etymological source.) Interestingly, foray has seen a resurgence of use connected to its foraging roots, as evidenced by the growing popularity of mycophile-led mushroom “forays” that have been lately popping up like toadstools.
The Excuse of the Day for 22 Feb 2026 is...
2026-02-22 12:00 amexcuseoftheday_feedthe "any" key is broken
The Cheyne Mystery, by Freeman Wills Crofts
2026-02-21 08:48 pmstandardebooks_new_feedA man is drugged and then burgled for something he doesn’t know he has.
New Cover: “Fall At Your Feet”
2026-02-21 05:20 pmscalziwhatever_feed
Yes, I’ve been on a bit of a tear recently as far as covers go, but let’s just say I had a bit of a backlog from when I was writing the novel. Now that it’s been cleared off the table I have a little time to do this sort of thing. This is currently how I do my “me” time. It’s this or setting fire to things.
This song is one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands, and I had been meaning to get to it for a bit. Also for this one I had a technical project of trying to nail the vocal balance, which is for me the trickiest part of doing any of this. I think I did pretty decent job sitting it into the mix this time around. It’s fun to still be learning things.
Enjoy!
— JS
Books Received, February 14 — February 20
2026-02-21 09:02 amjames_davis_nicoll
Seven books new to me. four fantasy, one horror, one ostensibly non-fiction, and one romance. Three are series. Yeah, there does seem to be a shortage of science fiction.
I had a bunch of stuff come in just after the cut-off time for these. Next week will look very different.
Books Received, February 14 — February 20
Poll #34247 Books Received, February 14 — February 20
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41
Which of these look interesting?
View Answers
I Want You to Be Happy by Jem Calder (May 2026)
3 (7.3%)
In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir by Francis Fukuyama (September 2026)
5 (12.2%)
A Divided Duty: An October Daye Novel by Seanan McGuire (September 2026)
14 (34.1%)
Wickhills by Premee Mohamed (September 2026)
16 (39.0%)
Hallowed Bones: A Sons of Salem Novel by Lucy Smoke (October 2026)
2 (4.9%)
Falling for a Villainous Vampire by Charlotte Stein (October 2026)
6 (14.6%)
I Am the Monster Under the Bed: A Novel by Emily Zinnikas (September 2026)
14 (34.1%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
34 (82.9%)
More in Sadness than in Anger
2026-02-21 11:05 amcharlie_stross_diary_feedSorry I haven't updated the blog for a while: I've been busy. (Writing the final draft of a new novel entirely unconnected to anything else you've read—space opera, new setting, longest thing I've written aside from the big Merchant Princes doorsteps. Now in my agent's inbox while I make notes towards a sequel, if requested.)
Over the past few years I've been naively assuming that while we're ruled by a ruthless kleptocracy, they're not completely evil: aristocracies tend to run on self-interest and try to leave a legacy to their children, which usually means leaving enough peasants around to mow the lawn, wash the dishes, and work the fields.
But my faith in the sanity of the evil overlords has been badly shaken in the past couple of months by the steady drip of WTFery coming out of the USA in general and the Epstein Files in particular, and now there's this somewhat obscure aside, that rips the mask off entirely (Original email on DoJ website ) ...
A document released by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of the Epstein files contains a quote attributed to correspondence involving Jeffrey Epstein that references Bill Gates and a controversial question about "how do we get rid of poor people as a whole."
The passage appears in a written communication included in the DOJ document trove and reads, in part: "I've been thinking a lot about that question that you asked Bill Gates, 'how do we get rid of poor people as a whole,' and I have an answer/comment regarding that for you." The writer then asks to schedule a phone call to discuss the matter further.
As an editor of mine once observed, America is ruled by two political parties: the party of the evil billionaires, and the party of the sane (so slightly less evil) billionaires. Evil billionaires: "let's kill the poor and take all their stuff." Sane billionaires: "hang on, if we kill them all who's going to cook dinner and clean the pool?"
And this seemed plausible ... before it turned out that the CEO class as a whole believe entirely in AI (which, to be clear, is just another marketing grift in the same spirit as cryptocurrencies/blockchain, next-generation nuclear power, real estate backed credit default options, and Dutch tulip bulbs). AI is being sold on the promise of increasing workforce efficiency. And in a world which has been studiously ignoring John Maynard Keynes' 1930 prediction that by 2030 we would only need to work a 15 hour work week, they've drawn an inevitable unwelcome conclusion from this axiom: that there are too many of us. For the past 75 years they've been so focussed on optimizing for efficiency that they no longer understand that efficiency and resilience are inversely related: in order to survive collectively through an energy transition and a time of climate destabilization we need extra capacity, not "right-sized" capacity.
Raise the death rate by removing herd immunity to childhood diseases? That's entirely consistent with "kill the poor". Mass deportation of anyone with the wrong skin colour? The white supremacists will join in enthusiastically, and meanwhile: the deported can die out of sight. Turn disused data centres or amazon warehouses into concentration camps (which are notorious disease breeding grounds)? It's a no-brainer. Start lots of small overseas brushfire wars, escalating to the sort of genocide now being piloted in Gaza by Trump's ally Netanyahu (to emphasize: his strain of Judaism can only be understood as a Jewish expression of white nationalism, throwing off its polite political mask to reveal the death's head of totalitarianism underneath)? It's all part of the program.
Our rulers have gone collectively insane (over a period of decades) and they want to kill us.
The class war has turned hot. And we're all on the losing side.
[dreamwidth/dreamwidth] 0e57a6: Tidy SubdomainFunction.pm
2026-02-21 12:52 amgithub posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
changelogBranch: refs/heads/main Home: https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth Commit: 0e57a69f14581a09c64220452225efd10842985d https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth/commit/0e57a69f14581a09c64220452225efd10842985d Author: Mark Smith mark@dreamwidth.org Date: 2026-02-21 (Sat, 21 Feb 2026)
Changed paths: M cgi-bin/Plack/Middleware/DW/SubdomainFunction.pm
Log Message:
Tidy SubdomainFunction.pm
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 noreply@anthropic.com
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github posting in changelogBranch: refs/heads/main Home: https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth Commit: 558458c9ab5c5548f20b6b380857292cc8350203 https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth/commit/558458c9ab5c5548f20b6b380857292cc8350203 Author: Mark Smith mark@dreamwidth.org Date: 2026-02-20 (Fri, 20 Feb 2026)
Changed paths: M cgi-bin/Plack/Middleware/DW/Auth.pm M cgi-bin/Plack/Middleware/DW/SubdomainFunction.pm
Log Message:
Handle userpics subdomain in Plack middleware
The 'userpics' SUBDOMAIN_FUNCTION (e.g., v.dreamwidth.org) was not handled by SubdomainFunction middleware, causing userpic URLs to fall through to the Auth middleware which triggered unnecessary domain session cookie bounces. Under Apache, userpic_trans handles these directly without any auth flow.
Rewrite PATH_INFO from /{picid}/{userid} to /userpic/{picid}/{userid} to match DW::Controller::Userpic's route, and skip the domain session bounce since userpics are public images that don't need authentication.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 noreply@anthropic.com
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github posting in changelogBranch: refs/heads/main Home: https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth Commit: 0c0f75384cb09c6515b5381d9873105581cad595 https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth/commit/0c0f75384cb09c6515b5381d9873105581cad595 Author: Mark Smith mark@dreamwidth.org Date: 2026-02-20 (Fri, 20 Feb 2026)
Changed paths: M cgi-bin/LJ/Protocol.pm M cgi-bin/LJ/S2/ReplyPage.pm M cgi-bin/LJ/Talk.pm
Log Message:
Skip forced captcha on high-comment entries less than 30 days old
The 5k-comment captcha threshold was meant to slow bots targeting specific entries, but most spam hits old/abandoned journals while active anon memes are the ones suffering from the forced captcha.
Entries posted within the last 30 days can now receive up to the full 10k comments without a forced captcha. Entries older than 30 days keep the existing 5k threshold. All other captcha triggers (rate limiting, journal settings, spam heuristics) are unchanged.
Also refactors require_captcha_test to accept an LJ::Entry object instead of a bare ditemid, since the entry is already available at all call sites.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 noreply@anthropic.com
Commit: e78529d60c5e457534481f350c381821dc5810fd https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth/commit/e78529d60c5e457534481f350c381821dc5810fd Author: Mark Smith mark@dreamwidth.org Date: 2026-02-20 (Fri, 20 Feb 2026)
Changed paths: M .gitignore
Log Message:
Add .worktrees/ to .gitignore
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 noreply@anthropic.com
Compare: https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth/compare/86a23512cf4a...e78529d60c5e
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The Excuse of the Day for 21 Feb 2026 is...
2026-02-21 12:00 amexcuseoftheday_feednobody forwarded that memo
github posting in changelogBranch: refs/heads/main Home: https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth Commit: 86a23512cf4aca54a77dd38f26348c19a338d83d https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth/commit/86a23512cf4aca54a77dd38f26348c19a338d83d Author: Nova sda1@umbc.edu Date: 2026-02-20 (Fri, 20 Feb 2026)
Changed paths: M cgi-bin/LJ/S2/EntryPage.pm
Log Message:
Add per-entry OpenGraph meta tags for public entries (#3522)
Emit og:title, og:type, og:url, og:site_name, og:description, og:image, article:published_time, article:author, and article:tag for public journal entries so that Discord, Slack, Facebook, and other services can generate meaningful link previews.
Only public entries get these tags — non-public entries keep the existing site-wide defaults (DW logo) to avoid content leakage. All attribute values are escaped with LJ::ehtml(). The entry OG block is prepended to head_content so the entry-specific og:image takes precedence over the site-wide fallback from Page().
Fixes #2206
Co-authored-by: Novalinium nova@noblejury.com Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.6 noreply@anthropic.com
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laconic
2026-02-21 12:00 ammerriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 21, 2026 is:
laconic • \luh-KAH-nik\ • adjective
Laconic describes someone or something communicating with few words. Laconic can more narrowly mean "concise to the point of seeming rude or mysterious."
// The stand-up comedian is known for his laconic wit and mastery of the one-liner.
Examples:
"Elijah did not enjoy all my choices. ... But my son listened closely to every selection. He remembered plot points better than I did and assessed historical figures concisely. 'Mean,' he said of Voltaire. 'Creepy,' summed up Alexander Hamilton. ... Most surprising, my laconic teenager shared my love of Austen. Those hours listening to Pride and Prejudice were some of the happiest of my parenting life." — Allegra Goodman, LitHub.com, 4 Feb. 2025
Did you know?
We'll keep it brief. Laconia was once an ancient province in southern Greece. Its capital city was Sparta, and the Spartans were famous for their terseness of speech. Laconic comes to us by way of the Latin word laconicus ("Spartan") from the Greek word lakĹŤnikos. In current use, laconic means "terse" or "concise to the point of seeming rude or mysterious," and thus recalls the Spartans' tight-lipped taciturnity.
github posting in changelogBranch: refs/heads/main Home: https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth Commit: 722aca660143d17125cf5f95365e3d8272f5773c https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth/commit/722aca660143d17125cf5f95365e3d8272f5773c Author: Mark Smith mark@dreamwidth.org Date: 2026-02-20 (Fri, 20 Feb 2026)
Changed paths: M htdocs/js/jquery.shortcuts.nextentry.js
Log Message:
Fix k shortcut sometimes not scrolling to previous entry
prevPageEntry() used a strict < comparison with no tolerance, so if the scroll position landed even 1px past an entry's top (due to sub-pixel rounding or animation overshoot), pressing k would "scroll" to the entry already on screen, appearing to do nothing. Add the same 50px tolerance that nextPageEntry() already uses.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 noreply@anthropic.com
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Romans 13:9-10
2026-02-21 12:00 pmvotd_feed“The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Brought to you by BibleGateway.com. Copyright (C) . All Rights Reserved.
Brought to you by BibleGateway.com. Copyright (C) . All Rights Reserved.
Freckles, by Gene Stratton-Porter
2026-02-20 05:29 pmstandardebooks_new_feedAn orphan discovers the joys of nature and found family in an Indiana swamp.
Armed with Madness, by Mary Butts
2026-02-20 03:59 pmstandardebooks_new_feedA group of friends staying at a remote cottage discover what could be the Holy Grail in a nearby well.
The Windfairies, by Mary De Morgan
2026-02-20 03:02 pmstandardebooks_new_feedThe third collection of fairy tales by Mary De Morgan.
25 Years in Ohio
2026-02-20 02:11 pmscalziwhatever_feed
February marks an anniversary for us: in this month in 2001, Krissy and Athena and I moved to this house in Bradford, Ohio, so now we have been citizens of this village and state for 25 years. On the 20th anniversary, I wrote a long piece about moving here and what that meant to us, and that’s still largely accurate, so I’m not going to replicate here. I will note that in the last five years, we’ve become even more entrenched here in Bradford, as we went on a bit of a real estate spree, purchasing a church, a campground, and a few other properties, and started a business and foundation here in town as well. We’ve become basically (if not technically precisely) the 21st century equivalent of landed gentry.
It’s possibly fitting that after a quarter century here in rural Ohio, I finally wrote a novel that takes place in it, which will be out, as timing would have it, on election day this year. The town in the novel is fictional but the county is real, as it my own, and it’s been interesting writing something about this place, now — that also, you know, has monsters in it. I certainly hope people around here are going to be okay with that, rather than, say, “you wrote what now about us?” There is a reason I made a fictional town, mind you.
I continue to be a bit of an odd duck for the area, which I don’t see changing, and despite the fact the number of full-time writers in Bradford has doubled thanks to Athena. On the other hand, as I’ve noted before, my output is such that Bradford is the undisputed literary capital of Darke County, and I think that’s something both Bradford and Darke County can be proud of.
Anyway, Ohio, and Darke County, and Bradford, have been good to me in the last quarter century. I hope I have been likewise to them. We’re likely to stay.
— JS
The Friend Zone Experiment by Zen Cho
2026-02-20 09:10 amjames_davis_nicoll
A successful businesswoman has the opportunity of a lifetime offered to her, only to have an old friend greatly complicate matters.
The Friend Zone Experiment by Zen Cho
encapsulate
2026-02-20 12:00 ammerriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 20, 2026 is:
encapsulate • \in-KAP-suh-layt\ • verb
Encapsulate literally means “to enclose in or as if in a capsule,” but the word is more often used figuratively as a synonym of summarize, to talk about showing or expressing a main idea or quality in a brief way.
// Can you encapsulate the speech in a single paragraph?
// The first song encapsulates the mood of the whole album.
// The contaminated material should be encapsulated and removed.
Examples:
“While choosing a single film to encapsulate a quarter-century of cinema is an impossible task, Bong Joon Ho’s dark comedy certainly belongs in the conversation. A scathing satire that links two families of vastly different means, the film’s stars thinly smile through the indignities and social faux pas before a climactic and inevitable eruption of violence.” — Kevin Slane, Boston.com, 2 Jan. 2026
Did you know?
We’ll keep it brief by encapsulating the history of this word in just a few sentences. Encapsulate and its related noun, capsule, come to English (via French) from capsula, a diminutive form of the Latin noun capsa, meaning “box.” (Capsa also gave English the word case as it refers to a container or box—not to be confused with the case in “just in case,” which is a separate case.) The earliest examples of encapsulate are for its literal use, “to enclose something in a capsule,” and they date to the late 19th century. Its extended meaning, “to give a summary or synopsis of something,” plays on the notion of a capsule being something compact, self-contained, and often easily digestible.
