Not quite 365 days questions meme. 28

Jan. 28th, 2026 12:19 am
pattrose: (Default)
[personal profile] pattrose
28. Have you ever played a kazoo?

Thankfully no. I guess I could have said I did but you would know I was full of it. Does anyone know anyone who has ever played one? It would be interesting if we said yes. Dang it, I know of no one.
toothpastepancake: (nahla magenta)
[personal profile] toothpastepancake posting in [community profile] beagoldfish
Title: 15 years (it's just a question of time)
Medium: Playlist/fanmix
Fandom: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy TV 2026
Length: 8 songs
Summary:

A playlist for Caleb Mir and Nahla Ake's deeply odd relationship!

Listen here. Tracklist & annotation under cut!

Read more... )
serafaery: (Default)
[personal profile] serafaery
Must sleep. Dog Mountain was beautiful and frigid and perfect and my fingers still hurt a little bit (worth it).

Not sure how to navigate any media right now.

I wanted to say.... Josh and I hosted our former neighbors for dinner over here the other night, and I felt so drained and sad afterward. I am not exactly sure of their ages but I know Michael is over 70 because he said so, and he is soooooo self-conscious about it. They are childless, and when we mentioned a couple of things that to us is pedestrian information, about identity security and about money (we were discussing the process of buying a house), they had vacant stares. I know it's hard to keep up when you don't have young people around to help, or close friends who happen to know this stuff - I certainly would know nothing about investing without Josh - but it scares me so much, for my own future, to see them not only not know, but then not ask any follow-up questions - not wanting to know. I get that they don't know us very well and maybe we are not close enough friends to feel they could trust us to offer anything valuable or trustworthy, but also, they are so lost, and I am so worried for them. Sigh. It makes me want to help them, but also it makes me worry for our future. How does one avoid this sort of predicament, if one is child free (or does not have a relationship with ones children)? It's scary to think of how many people out there are so naive and vulnerable. My parents were like this. I don't want to end up like this.

I do not enjoy their company but Josh does, and the connection is really important to Michael who is an interesting person, so Josh wants to get together with them quarterly. I am glad for this, maybe a real friendship can grow and maybe we can actually help them a tiny bit.

It just worries me how vulnerable people can get. And how limiting it can be to buy into beliefs about aging. My goodness. Michael thinks everyone who lays eyes on him sees nothing but an old guy. I don't think everyone is so quick to judge or even really notices much or cares? Josh and I are hoping and working very hard toward a vibrant 7th decade, if we are so lucky. He turns 49 tomorrow so we have some time yet. But we're hoping to have lots more fun for lots more time, like his parents. And, hopefully, if we are even more lucky, a gentle and peaceful and still connected 8th and 9th decade. I hope. I do. I guess, I have to keep connected to younger people. And it certainly won't be anyone I'm related to. But. Maybe there will be more friends out there for me, of various ages. Older friends are important, too! It's so fascinating to experience my own brain developing, I just finished this Essentialism book that was written by a young person and although I am grateful for the few little gems of insight in the beginning, for the most part it just seemed so shallow and childish to read. This is something that would be interesting to someone in their 30s, I kept thinking. We're past that.

I need more people around me who are already past that.
cornerofmadness: Angel in drag holding up cards (Default)
[personal profile] cornerofmadness
And there is about 6 inches of snow which is relatively less than we were expecting right? But there is a thick layer of sleet ice between the snow. Someone plowed the drive some but obviously not near the cars. It's a thick snowbank there and ontop my car is several inches inside an ice shell that I have to get off because if I don't and it blows off it will shatter a windshield of anyone behind me. It's dangerous.

The ice is holding me up as I jackhammer this stuff off the roof of my CR-V...until it didn't. Naturally it gives out on my bad leg side so down I go onto my bad knee and shoulder. My head hits and my hat takes off. It takes a second to realize that was a cushioned fall and I'm fine. My knee bent the natural way so I didn't hurt it (and at this point I can't damage the cartilage more. It's gone) My next thought is, well glad no one saw that. I crawl to my back car door because I will need a handhold to get that bad leg under me on the ice. Had to look like a walrus trying to get up on the rocks to wave to the crowd.

My pants are covered with ice. Ditto my wool pea coat. I get my hat and at least my glasses didn't break. I finish cleaning the car. The ice breaks again but under my left leg so I could catch myself. It takes an hour to do this. Roscoe the three legged mini chichuahua races out to yap at me. I talk to his mom who is furious that the cleaner only cleaned in front of HER apartment and not the other three buildings. She gives me the rest of the salt so I deal with that

My knee is sore. My shin has a goose egg because the blood thinners made a big-ass hematoma but otherwise, I have bruises on my ribs/arm/shoulder but nothing bad. BUT my county and the county the school is in are both still at level 2 snow emergency so no school tomorrow either. I.e. we ran out of salt to fix the roads so we're fucked.




That's the ice sandwich I was walking on and knocking off my car. I otherwise did nothing else I said I was doing today but did get distracted by [profile] 3sentenceficathon somebody come slap me.

For Fannish 50 I had a few things I wanted to talk about but now I'm forced to deal with fans needing a good grip on reality. Between Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, the Mighty Nein and the Amazing Digital Circus, it has to be said, YOUR head canon is just that. Yours. You don't get to threaten the creators when actual canon doesn't match it. You can disappointed sure. You can even quit the fandom. But nothing gives you the right to threaten the creators, the voice actors and other fans. I keep having to write this same blog post time and again (not that the ill behaved members are going to see it).


One of the big name Huskerdust fans quit in a huff (no threats, just they're done). I was wondering who'd be the next BNF (not me, my stories don't seem to hit well in this fandom for the most part but I have a small loyal following that I appreciate) but they're basically 'if you're following me for the fandom might as well unfriend me now. I refuse to have anything to do with this because...basically it didn't match their head canon and they'll be deleting stuff.

Have you ever done this? I mean I'm sure we've all quit a fandom for various reasons. I hated what Marti Noxon did to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I didn't see half of S6 of Buffy and most of S7 (I only watched a tiny part of it knowing it was the end and I hated what I saw) Ditto the last season of Angel and part of S3 of Angel. I've faded away in other fandoms. What I haven't done is get so mad that fandom didn't match my head canon that I deleted my profiles, erased my stories etc.

I'm not saying that it's wrong. That's something personal to you (not like the death threats and other threats of violence I'm seeing) But I'm curious if you have gotten that mad, why did you feel compelled to delete it all? (Then again I've known some people who have deleted everything just because).
pauraque: drawing of a wolf reading a book with a coffee cup (customer service wolf)
[personal profile] pauraque
This is the third and final part of my book club notes on As the Earth Dreams. [Part one, part two.]


"deh ah market" by Whitney French

A pair of cousins bend time and space to connect with worlds and relatives past. )


"Paroxysm" by Zalika Reid-Benta

A woman isolating from a new virus starts hallucinating. )


"Just Say Garuka" by Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga

Two teenagers test a friendship over magic carpet flying practice. )


the end

I think the group did not end up being super jazzed about this book on the whole, and I felt similarly. There were a few stories I liked, but some felt like maybe they needed another pass for cohesion, and the collection leaned thematically grim in a way that I had a hard time connecting with. Oh well, they can't all be winners.

The group plans to continue with The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories.

So, in my Outgunned

Jan. 27th, 2026 10:26 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
I think the schtick is the crew gets sent out to investigate potentially revolutionary tech and it's always legitimately amazing but also not what they're expecting. Case in point, they were looking into a supposed teleporter and now everyone is ant-sized.

Among my other ideas

Read more... )

Nine to five.

Jan. 27th, 2026 10:01 pm
hannah: (Library stacks - fooish_icons)
[personal profile] hannah
I'm wanted for three full days a week at the day gig for the next three weeks, minimum. I'd be foolish to turn it down. I'd also be foolish to leave other people in the lurch and hanging, even if all that's happened is a couple of emails. That it's a project with a defined end - eventually, they're going to run out of books - helps a little bit in assessing the coming days.

To my pride, last week I'd suggested they move the children's books they wanted to save to the closet in one of the kid's rooms. They decided to pack them up to move them, so last week I packed them up - too much per box to be practical, but finally contained. Today they said they wanted them in one of the kid's rooms, so I unpacked, sorted, and put them all away, and they were deeply pleased with the end results.

There's a lot to get through, and there's rooms of books in this place. They're coming out of closets, they turn up in boxes, they're hiding behind each other, and I haven't even touched the other side of the apartment. Rarely do I look forward to having to be at work in the morning, but then, rarely do I have this much fun at the job.
muccamukk: Grace stares at her laptop screen, rubbing her temple and looking appalled. (Lone Star: What Am I Reading?)
[personal profile] muccamukk
I honestly never did finish the last season of 9-1-1 Lone Star because I didn't like it as much after the cast change, and the new stories weren't grabbing me. Then I changed streaming services, and couldn't be bothered to find it another way.

But I was looking at what was on Crave, since I have that right now, and saw that there was a new show called 9-1-1 Nashville, and thought I'd give it a whirl.

Boy, whatever new direction notes they got, were not my thing. It's all about some rich guy and his sons fighting with each other, and a scheming baby mamma, and we basically don't meet any of the other characters in the pilot. How on earth did they talk Chris O'Donnell into this nonsense? He can't be that hard up!

Plus the rescues were just very silly. And this is by standards of the 9-1-1 franchise, which is already extremely silly. This girl gets carried into the air by a kite! Not like a special kite, just a... regular one. A tornado is bearing down on a country music festival and they save it with the power of heart!

I vaguely considered watching the second half of the pilot before deciding there's got to be other trash shows I'd enjoy more. When is the new Stargate show happening?

I think if you're interested in foe-yay half brothers who want to fuck, you might be in business?

Day 1834: "A very good job."

Jan. 27th, 2026 04:51 pm
[syndicated profile] wtfjht_feed

Posted by Matt Kiser

Day 1834

Today in one sentence: Trump said he’ll be “watching over” an “honest investigation” into the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis before blaming Pretti for carrying a gun he was legally permitted to have; House Democrats threatened to begin impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem if Trump doesn’t fire her; Stephen Miller reportedly directed Noem to publicly claim that Alex Pretti wanted to “massacre” immigration agents after he was shot and killed in Minneapolis; Trump’s immigration policies coincided with a year-to-year drop in U.S. population growth; and U.S. consumer confidence fell in January to its lowest level since 2014 as Americans grew more pessimistic about the economy and the job market.


1/ Trump said he’ll be “watching over” an “honest investigation” into the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis before blaming Pretti for carrying a gun he was legally permitted to have. “You can’t walk in with guns,” Trump said. “You can’t do that.” Minnesota’s gun laws permit open carrying a handgun as long as the gun owner has a valid permit, which Minneapolis Police said Pretti had. Even the NRA, a longtime Trump ally, called the Trump administration’s rhetoric that officers could be “legally justified” in shooting an armed citizen “dangerous and wrong,” urging a full investigation instead of “demonizing law-abiding citizens.” Trump added that you’d have to be a “stupid person” not to think what happened to Pretti was “very unfortunate.” (New York Times / CNBC / Politico / Associated Press / The Guardian)

  • Since July, the Trump administration has publicly declared 16 Department of Homeland Security shooting incidents justified even before investigations were completed. In at least four cases, prosecutors dropped charges or judges dismissed them after video or witness evidence contradicted DHS claims that those shot had attacked officers. No ICE, Border Patrol, or Homeland Security Investigations officer has faced criminal charges or disciplinary action.(Washington Post)

2/ House Democrats threatened to begin impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem if Trump doesn’t fire her. Democrats said Noem spread false or unsupported claims about the shooting, including that Pretti was “brandishing” a weapon and “violently” resisted officers, that they argued are contradicted by bystander video. Republicans Sens. Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski also called for Noem to resign. A DHS report sent to the House Oversight Committee, meanwhile, confirmed that two federal officers fired their guns at Pretti “approximately five seconds” after an officer yelled “He’s got a gun!” multiple times. The ultimatum came after Trump reportedly met for nearly two hours in the Oval Office with Noem and her top aide Corey Lewandowski to discuss the political and operational response in Minnesota. After the meeting, Trump said Noem was “doing a very good job” and rejected calls for her to step down. (CNBC / Politico / Washington Post / Axios / CBS News / New York Times / Associated Press / The Hill / ABC News / CNN / Bloomberg / Wall Street Journal)

  • U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz ordered acting ICE director Todd Lyons to appear in court Friday and warned he could be held in contempt for repeatedly failing to comply with court orders. Schiltz said ICE had ignored or delayed bond hearings and release orders for detained immigrants, writing that “the court’s patience is at an end.” (New York Times / Reuters / Politico / Washington Post)

3/ Stephen Miller reportedly directed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to publicly claim that Alex Pretti wanted to “massacre” immigration agents after he was shot and killed in Minneapolis. The DHS statement was rushed out under Miller’s guidance after reports that Pretti had a gun, despite limited information from the officers involved. Video later contradicted parts of that narrative, and Trump subsequently sent border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota. After the statement was released, Miller called Pretti “an assassin” on X, which JD Vance then amplified. (Axios)

4/ Trump’s immigration policies coincided with a year-to-year drop in U.S. population growth, which fell to 0.5% in 2025 from nearly 1% in 2024. The population grew by 1.8 million in 2025, the slowest rate of growth since the Covid-19 pandemic. Net international migration dropped to about 1.3 million from roughly 2.7 million a year earlier, a decline Census researchers said reflects tighter border controls late in Biden’s term and Trump’s immigration crackdown in the first half of his first year back in office. The Census Bureau projects that net immigration could fall to about 321,000 by mid-2026 if current trends continue. Births, meanwhile, barely exceeded deaths. (Associated Press / Washington Post / Wall Street Journal)

5/ U.S. consumer confidence fell in January to its lowest level since 2014 as Americans grew more pessimistic about the economy and the job market. the Conference Board reporting its index dropped 9.7 points to 84.5 – weaker than during the pandemic and missing all economist estimates. A separate expectations index, which measures consumers’ outlook for business conditions, jobs, and income over the next six months, fell 9.5 points to 65.1 – well below the recession warning threshold of 80. It’s the 12th consecutive month that the reading has come in under 80. (Bloomberg / ABC News / CNN / Associated Press)

The 2026 midterms are in 280 days; the 2028 presidential election is in 1,015 days; and it’s been 40 days since the Trump administration was required by law to release the Epstein files.



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Daily Check-In

Jan. 27th, 2026 05:59 pm
starwatcher: Western windmill, clouds in background, trees around base. (Default)
[personal profile] starwatcher posting in [community profile] fandom_checkin
 
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Tuesday, January 27, to midnight on Wednesday, January 28. (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #34142 Daily Check-in
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 19

How are you doing?

I am OK.
11 (61.1%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
7 (38.9%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single.
7 (36.8%)

One other person.
8 (42.1%)

More than one other person.
4 (21.1%)




Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
 

NyQuil

Jan. 27th, 2026 07:37 pm
lb_lee: animated Hack103 gravestone, displaying many stupid deaths. (yasd)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Guys. We took NyQuil. We have learned that we should NEVER take NyQuil. It has been bad. Should've just not taken anything.

I am starting to think that the rest of the writing might be late this month. January has not gone well.

Extremely grateful for roommates helping me out. Typing this in bed.

Gaming Update

Jan. 28th, 2026 01:15 pm
cyphomandra: (balcony)
[personal profile] cyphomandra
I dropped the difficulty on Alan Wake II (just in time to get attacked by some exceedingly fast-moving wolves that I would have totally failed to deal with otherwise) and played for a bit more, long enough to switch POV character to Alan himself. This meant a shift from small rural town to big grimy city, and also brings into play the writing mechanic, where once you discover a piece of information you can rewrite an earlier scene and open up new possibilities. It had some neat moments, but it still wasn’t enough to keep me interested. It doesn’t help that I don’t like having to use a gun as my sole weapon (I do now have a crossbow, but with only three bolts and only in Saga’s POV) and I’m not thrilled by playing as an FBI agent, which is Saga’s job. I have therefore abandoned it for now.

As per last update I had started playing LEGO Horizons with my son, and I’m sure it will come as no surprise that after playing through two levels of that (Cauldrons! Thunderjaws! Varl!) I loaded Horizon Forbidden West back on to the Playstation. Originally I’d intended to only play the DLC, Burning Shores, but my only save was right before the final mission arc (on the beach at Singularity, where you’re about to call everyone in) and it felt wrong to start there, plus I would be completely out of practice with all the weapons. So obviously the only logical answer was to replay all of HFW, which, ahem, I have now done. I am now on to Burning Shores, and zipping round the half-drowned and occasionally erupting remnants of Los Angeles.

I think as a game in and of itself HZD still has the edge, but there’s a lot I love about HFW as well, including some amazing new characters, expanded weapons (I have finally gotten the hang of the shredder gauntlet, woo hoo), and new mounts. And I do like what they do with the story - the Far Zeniths, and especially Tilda, are good antagonists. I do not like Machine Strike (I have played the tutorial and the two games required to get the trophy, and no more) and I never bother with the face paint, although I do like that they’ve stuck a Pride option in to annoy all those gamer gate types complaining about having to play as a queer woman.

Is this a Canadian thing?

Jan. 27th, 2026 04:13 pm
muccamukk: Abe has a question. (Hellboy: Question)
[personal profile] muccamukk
I want to try making this Melt the ICE hat, which of course knits in the round. I haven't done that, so I looked up a couple tutorials on how to knit with double pointed needles. They both said, "these will come in sets of five." The pattern says, "divide evenly on 4 DPNs" (which I assume implies the existence of a fifth needle to work with).

Every single one of the many sets of DPNs I got from Mom comes in a set of four.

Why?

第五年第十八天

Jan. 28th, 2026 08:16 am
nnozomi: (Default)
[personal profile] nnozomi posting in [community profile] guardian_learning
部首
手 part 5
扮, to dress up; 扯, to pull; 扰, to disturb pinyin )
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=64

语法
2.21 part 1 Adjective degree complements: 好, 差, 早, 开心 etc.
https://www.digmandarin.com/hsk-2-grammar

词汇
虫子, insect (pinyin in tags)
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-4-word-list/

Guardian:
你三番五次地来打扰我工作, you keep on showing up to disturb my work
画得不错, not badly drawn
[no bugs]

Me:
下次拍戏他要扮演古装角色。
玩得开心啊!
他很害怕虫子之类的。

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