doire | Network

Just finished Lord of the Rings. This may well have been the first time I read the Appendices all the way through (though I did skim the ones on the calendars and the alphabets).

Two takeaways from RotK:

First, the Scouring of the Shire hits different when you're under occupation. It's also perhaps the most fantastical part of the book, since it posits that the citizenry were nearly all ready to rise up and just needed a push, as opposed to a third of them cheering on Otho and Sharkey and a third of them just hunkering down and hoping it would all pass them by.

Second, the meme take on Denethor as 'doomscrolling in the Palantir to Sauron's algorithm' is ... remarkably apt.

Now ebooks for a couple of days, and then once I'm home the Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. UT is, as I recall, mostly-complete fragments with some commentary. The twelve-volume History of Middle-Earth reverses the proportions, and is thus less interesting to me. UT also contains a version of the Quest of Erebor ("The Hobbit") as told from Gandalf's perspective, which should be neat.

All quiet on bus stop patrol. Tuesday had a couple of plateless SUVs and a couple of blocks-away whistle choruses; Thursday and yesterday were quiet. It's nice to be out in the snow in my black wool coat and hat, though, and nice to get some smiles from folks driving past.

js_thrill

Today's song is Billy The Kid's Dream Of The Magic Shoes

Watch on YouTube

In some of the earlier annotations, Darnielle talked about his early reluctance to print lyrics on album sleeves. The annotations for this song are really about that reluctance, and his (continued?) conflict about whether lyrics live in the performance or whether they can be written down. There is a bit in Plato's Phaedrus that examines similar themes about rhetoric and writing, but I think a lot of it is mooted by the extensive work done by his fan-base to document things irrespective of what has been written on album sleeves.

More interesting is the way the title of the song provides necessary context for the song. This was, in some ways, also true for "Song for Cleomenes", and not especially true for "The Last Day of Jimi Hendrix's Life". The former has no internal explicit reference to Cleomenes, but you can sort of figure out who he is in the song if you know a bit about the history (or look it up), and the latter just includes the title entirely in the song. This song, however, is contextualized by the title. If you don't know have the information that it is about Billy the Kid, it's just not the same song. I haven't really reflected on how common this is a theme for his songs in general, but I guess I'll be keeping an eye out moving forward.

This is a nice simple song, but it does feel like we are starting to hear some of the Mountain Goats I am more familiar with, which is nice.

Current Music: Billy The Kid's Dream of The Magic Shoes - The Mountain Goats

pauraque

Presenting my first lifer of 2026: Harlequin Duck!

two dark blue ducks with elaborate red and white markings float together on rough water

They usually winter on the sea coast and are rare in landlocked Vermont, but occasionally one will stop off on Lake Champlain for a while and all the birders come running. The lake is at least an hour drive for me so I can't always just drop everything and go when there are interesting waterfowl, especially if it's off some remote point and you can barely see the bird through a scope anyway.

Then last year there were these two male Harlequins who decided it would be fun to hang out at a lakefront park in a little cove right by the parking area, posing and diving about ten feet away from people. Wonderful! Except! This happened immediately after I had major abdominal surgery and could not get out of bed, let alone drive to the lake. I did look for the ducks several times when I was recovered enough, but I never saw them.

But this week... guess who's back?? It's assumed that these are the same birds since they're so rare and even more notable to have a pair of males, right at the exact same spot.

( more photos and rambling about ducks )

3sfmod posting in

threesentenceficathon

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umadoshi

I finished Chuck Wendig's Wanderers (which according to the acknowledgements clocks in around 800 pages in hard copy) and wound up in that all-too-familiar place of "that was interesting, but I don't think I'm going to bother with the sequel". (Although by definition, I imagine the sequel must be telling a very different kind of story.) No idea why it is that I can often tell only partway through a book that I probably won't pick up its sequel and yet still want to finish the current one.

I also just read Inside Threat, the sixth of K.B. Spangler's Rachel Peng [see icon] novels. There's one more planned, and then that's it for this novel series; I think she's still intending to write a third Hope Blackwell novel (some of the events of that probably-someday book directly influenced what happened in this one, but the whole 'verse is a very twisty pretzel in terms of chronological vs. publication order). And this reminds me--I don't think I ever mentioned here that Act III of the A Girl and Her Fed comic, the core of the whole thing, wrapped up a few months ago, ending the series. (IIRC, Spangler does have ideas that could eventually turn into a fourth act of the webcomic, but has no current plans to pursue doing it. It sounds like AGAHF and the associated works understandably got harder and more exhausting to do over the last decade as the real-world US political situation got worse and worse and worse.)

There isn't a whole lot I can say about a sixth novel in a series, but Spangler's descriptions of the series when she's doing promo on Bluesky always entertain me. Yesterday she posted "It's book launch week! Spend the weekend catching up with my bargain basement cyborg hivemind. Murder, mystery, and a detective who just wants to be left alone with her poetry and bad romance novels"; here's her "what's this series about?" Bluesky thread from a few days ago.

So once again: highly recommended, and it's entirely possible to just read this set of novels without reading/knowing the comic. It means not knowing a lot of things about the world overall, but they're things that Rachel herself doesn't know at this point (and doesn't learn about until Act II of the comic, which starts after her books have wrapped up). I enjoy the comic and other material very much, but the Rachel books are by far my favorite.

And that bit got long, so just quickly:

--I'm a few more chapters into Braiding Sweetgrass and haven't picked up a next novel yet.

--

scruloose and I are current on the new season of The Pitt and four episodes into Pluribus, and just watched the season 2 premiere of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. (Now to just hope this season covers past vol. 10 of the manga, since after we finished season 1 in 2024, I read volumes 7-10 before deciding to stop reading ahead and stick with the anime. It'd be nice to get at least a bit of new-to-me material this season, given that. Anyone know offhand how many episodes S2 will be?)

--And I've technically started a new (!) video game, in the form of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (on Switch), but am not very far at all yet.

Current Mood: blank

lovelyangel

U.S.S. Athena
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Episode 1

(Spoiler-free Commentary)

The premiere episode of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is available for free viewing (for I don’t know how long) at YouTube. I made time to watch it last night.

I had been hopeful for a good showing, and I was not disappointed. I’ve always loved Holly Hunter (since Broadcast News... and, yay! The Incredibles!) and want her to be a big success here. Also, I’m a fervent Trekkie – from way back to the actual broadcast years of the original series in the 1960s.

In the episode, Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti were fabulous, as expected. The cadets were the expected variety of races, temperaments, maturity, composure, and intelligence; they have room to grow.

(One odd thought... if you take the academy’s chancellor and most? all? of the academy’s recruits into space... wouldn’t losing them all at once be catastrophic for the academy? I guess we’d better hope that only a small percentage of cadets are on the Athena at any one time. Dunno.)

I don’t have the time nor the budget to subscribe to Paramount+, so I won’t see the remainder of season one until much later. But I’ll continue to monitor reviews. There are always lots of review articles online. I did follow review articles of Foundation and Murderbot when I was watching those series. There are plenty of Starfleet Academy reviews online currently.

There was one article I enjoyed: I Love That Holly Hunter Can’t Sit in a Chair Normally on ‘Starfleet Academy’ at Gizmodo. And I too love that about Captain Ake.

What was quite interesting was the comments section of the article. Apparently a large number of Trekkies really dislike the new show. Reading their complaints was interesting. I hope the producers of the series ignore that feedback and simply continue on their chosen path.

On the other hand, a couple of comments did resonate with me.

I LOVED her doing all that! I'm 5'2" myself and while I don't often get the chance to be in chairs like her character's, I could see myself doing that on occasion. I almost certainly did as a kid. As for those having a "problem" with this show, I am a long-time Trek fan, having started watching as a kid right after it went into syndication in the 1970s (I'm just one year older than the franchise), and I love every iteration. Are they all perfect? No. Do some of them challenge Roddenberry's vision? Of course. Are they woke? You better believe it, from day one 60 years ago! But they never stray so far that you can't recognize the ultimate message: We can be better. We can do our best to be kind, understanding, tolerant, collaborative and uplifting. If you don't like that, fine; don't watch. But don't tell me Starfleet Academy is not Trek, because it very, very much is, and it proved that in the first two episodes right off the bat.

–– MartinC

and:

I liked her character, immensely. And look – I’m 70, and I know they’re targeting a generation that’s several removed from me, but it’s still Trek … and I love it.

And I’ve got to say … when they brought the Athena (god, what a gorgeous starship) down to San Francisco, with Rufus Wainwright singing “you’d better wear some flowers in your hair,” it was practically a religious moment for me. I feel sorry for anyone who can’t share that joy.

–– Zaphod

Haters probably didn’t like Lower Decks or Prodigy or Strange New Worlds either. Well, let them sulk elsewhere. I like all flavors of Trek. (Admittedly, I have some reservations about Enterprise.) Haters include non-Trekkie White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. SMH. Let Miller know that Star Trek has been “woke” for 60 years.

forestofglory

Here’s another Media Roundup after not months and months! Hopefully I’ll be reading and watching things other than fic a bit more often and thus post these media roundups more often than I was.

I seem to have gotten into the habit of reading a lot of graphic novels in December and January. I currently have a big pile out from the library – and I’ve read a few of them, and hopefully will get around to even more of the pile.

Lu and Ren’s Guide to Geozoology by Angela Hsieh— A very charming graphic novel about two girls on an adventure. Featuring charming art and very cute geo fauna! (As a Mandarin learner I did find the almost but not quite hanzi characters a little bit frustrating)

The Pale Queenby Ethan M. Aldridge—Another YA graphic novel, this one featuring an f/f romance. I really liked the fae in this book – they were a good mix of beautiful and scary. The art is also lovely!

Crush of Music— I’m still watching this very slowly, the subtitles have mostly been better for the last few episodes –so that’s nice. I’m enjoying seeing Liu Yuning and Zhou Shen interact in this – at one point they played the kazoo together!

Various Batman ect comic—So I mentioned in my 2025 media review post that I accidentally acquired a new fandom, that fandom is batfam. This is embarrassing for me because for years I've been prone to what R calls “the Batman rant” where I complain that punching people in the face is a dumb way to reduce crime rates. Plus I just feel like superhero comics are a space that's pretty hostile to me and my values. But apparently if you give me fic about a family of 3-8 adopted siblings finding each other/bonding and don't make me think too hard about the moral foundations of the universe then I'm willing to suspend my moral disbelief.

Anyways I got sucked in enough to be curious about the source material and have been reading stuff on hoopla. I'm fairly impressed with their comic reading interface too, it has a nice flow. (It doesn’t play well with my RSI issues but then neither does turning pages) The actual stories vary in quality, but some of them are surprisingly good. Even the not very good ones are surprisingly more-ish. I’m bringing a lot of emotional investment in these characters from my fic reading which also helps make the comics more engaging.

The Cross-Dressed Union—I thought that if my media theme at the moment is comfort that I should really start a new crossdressing girl drama since that's a big comfort trope of mine, So I asked around for recs and started this drama about an arranged marriage between a crossdressing woman and crossdressing man. It sounded fun but so far I’m pretty meh about it. I think my biggest problem is that the ML is the main character, and for these kinds of stories I prefer more focus on the FL. Also it's not doing enough with gender

james

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oursin

Honestly, we thought better of the Finns, being told how amazing a society they have: How would you feel if your therapist’s notes – your darkest thoughts and deepest feelings – were exposed to the world? For 33,000 Finnish people, that became a terrifying reality While the guy involved seems to have been an absolute horror from a young age in terms of hacking exploits, doxxing and swatting people, etc, we also note that there was actually criminal negligence brought against the company holding the patient data, which sounds a bit grim in terms of regulatory procedures and oversight.

***

This is very peculiar, because you see 'catfishing' and you think it's about monetary fraud, but that didn't seem to be at stake here: How a friend request led a beauty queen to uncover Scotland's most prolific catfish:

[T]hey were all left wondering why she did it. "All of us were pretty much left with no answers whatsoever," Abbie says.

I was wondering about whether there was something similar in play to some of the prolific poison-pen letter-writers in that Penning Poison book I read last year: not all of them were 'women with nature turned sour in the veins and sometimes terrorising whole communities for years with their spite' but that was one category.

***

Now, this is creepy: Manager of women’s football club banned for 12 years after bombarding players with indecent images:

Hamilton denied 24 FA charges of improper conduct, all relating to his time in charge of the club, but an independent regulatory commission concluded that 23 of the 24 were proven. The FA received evidence from four players and a staff member, all of whom detailed examples of Hamilton trying to elicit sexual activity between May 2022 and November 2024.
....
The commission also noted “with sadness” that one of the victims appeared to blame herself, and that more broadly the complainants “feared the consequences of complaining and that it would impact on their chances of being selected”, adding: “Worst of all, some of them somehow felt that it might be their fault.”

He sounds absolutely terrible quite apart from that: “verbally aggressive and bullying management style”.

***

Dining across the divide - this week it's the Grand Canyon - not yet online - because one of the parties is a Yaxley-Lennon fanboy.

***

And this is just a minor thing that agitated the niggles and peeves when it crossed my line of sight earlier today, but if you are writing a historical novel about the first women at the University of Oxford I really don't expect it to be set in the 1920s. That was when they were first, finally, awarded degrees. They'd been studying there much longer, over 40 years.

jazzfish posting in

endings

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chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2026/01/17/the-happenstancers-at-21c/

heleninwales

2/52 for the group 2026 Weekly Alphabet Challenge

This week's theme was: B is for Barbed

My first thought for the theme was barbed wire, but I didn't see any I could make a decent photo of. Fortunately today on our walk I spotted some gorse bushes which are naturally barbed.

I'll post more photos of the walk tomorrow when I have more time.

thewayne

This is going to majorly PO American auto makers! Breaks my little heart. But that wasn't the reason for the deal.

Biden put a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles and Canada followed suit. China's cars are very wide in range in features: some are utter crap, some make a Tesla look like a Tonka, but Tesla hasn't really been updating their cars like they should. And above all, Chinese EVs are VERY inexpensive! How? Cheap labor, possibly even prison labor. But as a result of these prices, China has greatly reduced their use of fossil fuels and EV sales are soaring over there.

When Canada put in the tariff, China retaliated with a high tariff on Canadian canola seeds, a major farm export. With this drop in the EV tariff, China is dropping theirs from 84% to 15%. There were other items taxed in China's retaliation, I suppose those are still being negotiated.

But here's the telling bit: "Carney [Canadian Prime Minister] said China has become a more predictable partner to deal with than the U.S, the country’s neighbor and longtime ally.

“Our relationship has progressed in recent months with China. It is more predictable and you see results coming from that,” Carney said.

Carney hasn’t been able to reach a deal with U.S. President Trump to reduce some tariffs that are punishing some key sectors of the Canadian economy and Trump has previously talked about making Canada the 51st state."

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jan/16/canada-cuts-chinese-ev-tariff-100-exchange-lower-canola-tariffs/

https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/16/2112255/canada-reverses-tariff-on-chinese-evs

nanila

If you could change one life-changing event in the life of someone important to you, would you?

I know there's a philosophy that experiences make you who you are and you shouldn't wish them away, but I have a few friends who have been through what I feel is a disproportionate and unfair amount of tragedy in their lives. Partner suicide, early death of parents, sudden loss of physical health, financial hardship, homelessness. I don't think any one person should have to go through all of those before the age of thirty. And yet. Here we are. So yes, I absolutely would change that for certain people if I could.
Which do you think is easier to do, being friends for many years, or being life partners for many years?

Uh, neither? Both take work! You have to listen and try to empathise and forgive and communicate. All relationships require effort, and if they don't, someone is being used.
Have you ever walked away from someone you considered a friend?

Yes. It's not very pleasant. But occasionally necessary for the sake of self-preservation.
If you had to choose between telling the truth and hurting a friend or lying and making them happy, which would you choose?

Barring a handful of exceptional circumstances, most of which involve an immediate threat to life, lying and making them happy. Life is difficult enough without intentionally causing pain.
Which would you rather hear--the truth which will hurt, or the comforting lie?

The comforting lie, if it comes to that. I'd hope it wouldn't, most of the time. I'd like to believe that truths can be delivered kindly, most of the time.

thewayne

Just a minor issue!

From the article: "The bug appears to be tied to Secure Launch, a security feature that uses virtualization-based protections to ensure only trusted components load during boot. On systems with Secure Launch enabled, attempts to shut down, restart, or hibernate after applying the January patches may fail to complete. From the user's perspective, everything looks normal – until the PC keeps running anyway, refusing to be denied life.

Microsoft says that entering the command "shutdown /s /t 0" at the command prompt will, in fact, force your PC to turn off, whether it wants to or not."

It hasn't affected my two Win 11 computers, haven't powered up my laptop in a month, so it hasn't updated. I would expect this will be updated with next month's Patch Tuesday release, but they may release an out of schedule patch to fix it.

Of course, make sure all your documents are saved before issuing that shutdown command or you may risk losing information.

And all computers will shut down when you pull the plug out of the wall or bus strip.

https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/16/patch_tuesday_secure_launch_bug_no_shutdown/

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/16/2144202/patch-tuesday-update-makes-windows-pcs-refuse-to-shut-down

asakiyume

I don't like to go so long without posting! Just offline stuff piling on (nothing personally dire, though). The offline stuff is doing a number on my ability to write, but I still manage to squeeze out microfictions, though not quite daily. Here's one from a few days ago:

I dreamed of a pharaoh, awaking after death and arranging to his liking the various precious items buried with him.

"You've got quite an ego," I snapped at him (dream-me is apparently rude to people's faces), "having this massive pyramid built just so people would remember you."

"That's not why I had it built. It's for all the stories that collect around it. Adventures, time travel, curses, beings from the stars--I hear them all, and they entertain me," he replied.

And here's a sweet video my tutor sent me of Martin, a pygmy marmoset monkey, whining at Gordo-the-dog, who's relaxing.

mallorys_camera

I was planning to hit the gym & do a Big Shop this morning. But I had neglected to check the weather forecast.

And when I woke up this morning, Hideous White Stuff was falling from the sky! More is expected. Not a lot of inches, but "heavy banding" (ugh!), which will make driving perilous.

The prestidigitators had augured a break in the snowfall around 7am, so I made an expedition to the Hannaford's of the Living Dead at that early hour to pick up enough provisions to tide me over till Monday. I was a kind of parade marshal for a cavalcade of trucks, all of which wanted to be going 50 mph. The roads were unplowed: I wanted to go 30 mph. The truck drivers were not happy with me. FUCK 'em.

Don't think I'll be going to the transfer station or the gym today! It's snowing again.

###

I had a conversation with the Big Remuneration Client. We have no plans to wind down, Big Remuneration Client said, but acknowledged that they are indeed reprioritizing. So my anxiety on that front is not all PTSD. Big Remuneration Client asked me to give him "a little time" to respond to my concerns.

If I had to guess, I'd say I will continue working for the client. In fact, my responsibilities may even increase—I made the bold suggestion that he let me start picking my own topics for analysis.

But I could be entirely wrong about that, so (a) it's a good thing I have another revenue stream till mid-April and (b) I need to start looking at alternative revenue streams after that.

Retirement subsidies cover my basic expenses, but if I want to do anything beyond enjoying a roof over my head, using utilities, and eating, I need other sources of cash flow.

###

Chapter 5 of the WiP has to open with some pontifications on the nature of friendship.

Then I kill off Debbie Reynolds. Debbie Reynolds catches COVID (of course!), and ends up in the ICU, where Grazia is her nurse & so, has to code her. Code is a failure, Debbie Reynolds dies. This precipitates Grazia's full-scale breakdown; Grazia follows the flaxen-haired girl back to the decrepid decaying mansion where the cult shelters, spends a week doing Cult Things & eventually gets rescued by Neal, who nurses her back to health at his Catskills cottage during which they have some sort of Significant Conversation on Neal's porch—which Grazia then remembers as she is standing on the porch again with Flavia & Daria the day after Neal's memorial for that full-circle effect. End Part 1.

This means I have to start with some Grazia/Neal phone conversations during which Grazia describes the cult & Neal senses her developing attraction to it. Or else Neal won't know where to look when Grazia disappears.

I don't much feel like writing today.

I don't much feel like doing anything today.

But I'm gonna write anyway.

purplecat

Black and white photo. There is a lot of foam, including some kind of vaguely weed-like foam covered thing standing to one side. Two mean stand on a raised platofrm in one corner. Another stands before some kind of foam covered console.

Ah! The BBC Foam machine. For a brief period, it figured prominently in Doctor Who.

jjhunter

Pick a thing or two that sums up how you're doing today, this week, in general, and tell me about it in the 5-7-5 syllables of a haiku.

=

Signal-boosting much appreciated!

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doire

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Page Summary

jazzfish - scouring, etc
js_thrill - This Year 365 songs: January 17th
pauraque - Harlequin Ducks are special enough to get their own post
3sfmod in threesentenceficathon - 2026 Three Sentence Ficathon - Post #!
umadoshi - Weekly proof of life: mainly media again
lovelyangel - Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
forestofglory - Media Roundup: Sequential Art
james - Cards
oursin - There's something nasty in these woodsheds all right
jazzfish in endings - (no subject)
chickenfeet - The Happenstancers at 21C
heleninwales - Gorse is very prickly!
thewayne - Canada cuts tariff on Chinese EVs from 100% to 6%!
nanila - The Friday Five on a Saturday
thewayne - Recent Win 11 update causes some PCs to refuse to shut down or hibernate
asakiyume - placeholder microfiction
mallorys_camera - That and This
purplecat - Random Doctor Who Picture
jjhunter - How Are You? (in Haiku)

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