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spikedluvI did two loads of laundry, hand-washed dishes, emptied the dishwasher, used the leftover chicken to make chicken noodle soup, went for a walk with the dogs, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, paid a bill online, and scooped kitty litter. There were some phone calls I should have made (that will now have to wait until Monday), but I forgot it was a Friday (presuming they were open). Pip being home throws me off.
I read some fanfic and more in Boyfriend Material. I watched some HGTV programs.
Pip felt crappier today. He took cold meds before bed last night and went to bed early. Today I picked up some cold & flu for him. He slept (or tried to, there was a lot of distraction) most of the morning, felt a bit better in the afternoon, and was in bed by 6pm.
Temps started out at 7.5(F) and reached 19.1. TWC app is calling for 1-3 inches of snow this evening (it’s supposed to start at 5pm) and 5-8 overnight. DNW!!
Mom Update:
Mom sounded good when I talked to her on the phone. I had planned to visit, but given that Pip was sicker today, I decided it would be better if I didn’t. Even with a mask. Her BFF had just left when I called, so she did have a visitor today. I probably won’t visit her again until I can be sure that Pip is getting better and I didn’t catch anything from him. I hate letting too many days build up between visits because I know she likes the company and I like to see for myself how she’s doing.
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theatlantic_science_feedThe Atlantic’s Science, Technology, and Health desk has had a busy 2025: Our writers have spent the year probing the limits of human consciousness and gene-editing technology, studying the ubiquity of microplastics, investigating the origins of a mysterious ALS outbreak, and even chasing down rubble from the White House’s demolished East Wing. Our reporting has led us to a number of strange and delightful facts. In a year defined by slop, we hope these nuggets of reality inspire some genuine awe:
- On average, women’s hands are more sensitive to warmth than men’s, some research suggests.
- The U.S. releases 100 million sterile flies in Mexico every week.
- A sea-slug species called Elysia chlorotica appears to perform photosynthesis. The slug eats algae, turns bright green, and spends the rest of its life converting light, water, and air into sugar, like a leaf.
- The jingle for Pepsi-Cola was the most recognized tune in America in 1942, according to one survey.
- Satellites can spot the hot breath geysering out of a single whale’s blowhole.
- Some AI doomers aren’t saving money for retirement. If by then the world is fully automated (or we’re all dead), why bother with an IRA?
- Scientists discovered—or created, depending on your perspective—a new color named “olo” this year. (Those who have seen it describe it as a sort of teal or a mix of blue and green.)
- Modern potatoes likely descended from an ancient tomato plant.
- By one calculation, spending on AI accounted for 92 percent of America’s GDP growth in the first half of 2025.
- This year, a baby with a rare genetic condition became the first child to receive a customized CRISPR gene-editing treatment to fix his specific DNA mutation.
- During the late 1800s, baseball players experimented with four-sided bats.
- And in the early 1970s, Little League tried to prevent girls from playing baseball by saying that being hit with a ball could cause breast cancer.
- On a single day in 1900, a former schoolteacher destroyed three saloons using bricks, rocks, and a billiard ball—all to advance the cause of temperance.
- When the New Jersey Meadowlands was a dump site, it accepted rubble from the London Blitz and the Doric columns of New York’s old Penn Station (along with toxic manufacturing sludge and standard garbage).
- Amtrak trains couldn’t run between Albany and the Berkshires for several months this year because of a six-foot-deep sinkhole.
- Insects likely make up more than half of all animal species, but roughly 80 percent have never been documented by researchers.
- Malibu has a flock of wild parrots that may descend from pets that escaped homes during a fire in 1961.
- A hawk learned how to use crosswalk signals as a cue to ambush its prey
- A Danish study from 2018 found that tennis players lived longer than swimmers, cyclists, and joggers.
- The winners of the Academy Award for Best Cinematography from 2011 to 2013 were all 3-D movies.
- Some veterinarians recommend sunscreening pets—especially light-colored dogs.
- An army of robot dogs inspects cars in a Georgia Hyundai factory.
- There might not be enough fruits and vegetables in the world to allow the American food industry to switch entirely to natural dyes.
- The United States’ first-ever racially integrated baseball league for women will begin playing in the spring of 2026.
- There are an estimated 25,000 city-killer-size asteroids in near-Earth orbits and just under half have been found.
- In 1972, about one in five people who died in the U.S. received an autopsy. That rate has since dropped below one in 10.
- The word cooties initially referred to lice and other biting insects that American soldiers encountered during World War I.
- An ALS outbreak in a tiny French town may have been caused by wild mushrooms.
- Eggs are naturally seasonal.
- Because oranges from different regions can taste so different, orange-juice manufacturers blend batches of juice to maintain a consistent flavor profile, much like wine and whiskey makers do.
- In the 19th and early 20th centuries, so-called patent medicines sometimes contained explosives.
- The Baader 632 Thigh Filleting System can process 230 chicken thighs a minute.
- Fertility problems in men can often be overcome by treating a female partner, even if she doesn't have any fertility problems of her own.
- The Animal Welfare Act’s definition of animal excludes fish, insects, cephalopods, and most mice and rats.
- A single weed vape can hold a whopping 5,000 milligrams of THC.
- In Japan, you can buy soy sauce laced with ostrich antibodies.
- When lettuce is contaminated with E. coli, washing it doesn’t do much good.
- Any inanimate object is fundamentally just a collection of atoms; a living organism might be better understood as a dynamic pattern playing out over time.
- A prescription-only system on an AppleWatch can detect if the wearer is having a nightmare. It vibrates enough to stop the bad dream but not enough to wake them.
- In 1999, a vegetative patient suddenly started talking after being put on Ambien.
- Saturn’s official moon count nearly doubled this year after scientists confirmed the discovery of 128 new satellites.
- Olive Garden’s signature “Tour of Italy” dish has 3,200 milligrams of sodium—more than double what the American Heart Association considers an optimal daily amount for adults.
- Ounce for ounce, turkey contains less tryptophan—an amino acid popularly blamed for post-Thanksgiving sleepiness—than cheddar cheese or an octopus does.
- One AI start-up spent $1.8 million to purchase the URL friend.com.
- Calling a loved one by their name makes some people feel anxious or nauseated.
- Body builders have long consumed an enormous excess of food to help build muscles, but they are learning that bulking often takes just 10 percent more calories than the body needs to maintain itself.
- Because of a global cocoa shortage, confectioners are tweaking recipes so that their candies don’t contain much chocolate—or any at all.
- LinkedIn has a “Videos for You” tab that essentially turns the app into corporate TikTok.
- Soap’s most important disinfectant quality may be that it makes your hands slippery, to loosen debris.
- A plastic-bristled toothbrush may add approximately 30 to 120 microparticles of plastic to your diet with each cleaning.
- Sorry: Plastic is also the source of basically everything that’s good about chewing gum—its durability, its stretch, its ability to form bubbles.
- According to cybersecurity experts, those sketchy texts offering a tax rebate or warning of an unpaid toll are likely orchestrated by a highly organized criminal syndicate based mainly in China and known as the smishing triad.
- Bronze-cut pasta is especially delicious, but making it creates enormous amounts of “pasta dust,” which must be cleaned up with extra labor and machinery.
- Tanning beds emit UVA rays that bronze (and damage) the skin, but little of the UVB rays that boost vitamin D production.
- Some researchers want to turn a crater on the far side of the moon into a natural radio dish.
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silveradept( 26: Rocks )
bookviewcafe_feedIn which I finally watch the classic Frank Capra film “It’s a Beautiful Life.”
(NOTE: Plot spoilers ahead)
When I was growing up, my family somehow missed some important cultural events – I remember returning to grade school after certain weekends to hear all the other kids raving about how wonderful it was watching “The Wizard of Oz” once more on its annual showing on TV. (This was in the days long before DVDs or streaming, when you had to wait for one of the few stations to air a film.) I never saw that movie until I was probably in my 30s. With various stints living abroad in sometimes remote areas, I also missed a lot of touchstones like watching “Seinfeld” or the OJ Simpson trial. And I was living in Ecuador when the news filtered to me about Loreena Bobbitt – an Ecuadorian – “bobbing” her abusive American husband’s penis. I was glad I wasn’t a man, since locals angry about her arrest were talking about taking revenge on any gringo male they could catch.
But I digress. Thor shouldn’t have been so surprised this week when we decided to watch a Christmas movie, and I mentioned that I’d never seen “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the Frank Capra film starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey and Donna Reed as his wife Mary. “That’s it – we’re watching it,” he decided.
I had little knowledge about the film, just assuming it would be a sort of schlocky, sentimental and dated story. And it sort of is all that. But I was surprised to discover that it was also quirky and funny, with a charming glimpse of earlier 1900s American culture and some engaging characters like the evil foreclosing banker Mr. Potter (an excellent Lionel Barrymore) and the goofy guardian angel Clarence (Henry Travers). Thor even teared up a bit when George Bailey as a boy (played by Robert J. Anderson) saves the grief-stricken pharmacist from accidentally poisoning a patient.
And when the final bell on the Christmas tree rang to herald an angel earning his wings, we were both sniffling.
So, if you too somehow have managed to miss seeing the movie, I recommend it. It is enjoyably silly in the early parts, with a wacky high-school graduation party (of course, the actors are way too old for teenagers, since the story stretches from pre-Depression to post-World War II, but that’s okay). George and Mary are smitten at first sight (though she’s carried a torch for him since grade school), and really cut a rug doing the Charleston – until with a weird twist the dance floor opens to tumble everyone into a swimming pool.
And George’s memory-challenged Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) is a sweet clown who brings his pet raven to the family-business office, and also has other birds, a pet squirrel, and a monkey at home. There’s also a goat riding in a family car.
The plot turns darker halfway through, as George becomes increasingly trapped in others’ expectations of a “good life,” when he has yearned his whole life for travel, adventure, and building something important. “I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. Then, I’m comin’ back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I’m gonna build things.”
It’s his own decency and need to save others that really sentence him to stay in small-town Bedford and run the family building and loan business that is the David to Mr. Potter’s evil Goliath. The theme is not subtle, but Stewart does a good job of portraying the inner conflicts and outer crises that finally make him snap and decide on suicide. He is disturbingly believable when he furiously lashes out at his uncle, wife, and kids in the darkest scenes. Bumbling angel-in-training Clarence is sent to earth to stop him from flinging himself into the frozen river on Christmas, but George still wishes he’d never been born. Clarence then shows him all the damage that would have ensued if that were the case, and a Christmas miracle saves the day, and the community.
Fair enough, and a happy ending is not a bad thing. “Count your blessings.” But the message that personal dreams aren’t important when weighed against the needs of the community – that George just needs to accept that serving everyone except himself is the highest good – didn’t sit that well with me. (Apparently not with the FBI at the time, either, since they investigated the film for Communist/Socialist messaging that questioned big business.) What did the world miss out on when George gave up his dreams of college and ambitions to accomplish great things, tying himself to the demands of a growing family and so many needy neighbors? I related more to the young George (a talented boy actor), in his excitement and zest to see the world as he waved an early copy of “National Geographic,” and his young-adult determination to escape the “marriage trap” before his aborted departure for college. (Stopped by another of the family/business crises that kept trapping him.) Maybe there was another way he could have had a wonderful life.
But don’t mind my cavils – your mileage may vary. Enjoy the movie! Happy holidays and a better new year to us all!
*****
You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Café is Pause, a First Place winner of the Chanticleer Somerset Award and an International Pulpwood Queens Book Club selection. “A must-read novel about friendship, love, and killer hot flashes.” (Mindy Klasky). It’s also a love letter to the stunning beauty of her native Pacific Northwest wild places. Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com
sholioThe prompt, which is somewhat spoilery for the fic
[from an anon] Biggles prompt- on a case they run into/are made to work with someone who was nasty to Biggles in his school-days, who tries to renew such treatment, and EvS, also involved with whatever they're investigating, finds himself possessed of both an unexpected protective urge and in the rare position to offer his own "you're better than the people you're working for" speechGen, late in canon, Erich + team with perhaps slight EvS/Biggles undertones, 1800 wds
Originally posted on Tumblr
( 1800 wds under the cut )
soniaI tend to like song with strong rhythms and melodies, and she tends to like the slow wandering songs with lots of ornamentation, so it's been broadening both of our repertoires. Here are a couple of songs I've been working on at her suggestion.
Zora Zazorila "Dawn is breaking". Here is Eva Quartet sounding fantastic. I listen to them and despair, because I will never ever sound like that, but I can sing my own version, with my own slower and simpler ornaments. Zora Zazorila sheet music
Bozha Zvezda "Lord's star". Here is Kitka singing it on their Wintersongs album, Leslie Bonnett gorgeously singing melody with Janet Kutulas. Bozha Zvezda sheet music
They learned it from Daniel Spassov, and here's his recording. Bozha Zvezda
Those songs are both Bulgarian, but in case anyone is interested in learning more about Balkan singing, Dragi Spasovski is a kind and knowledgeable teacher of Macedonian songs, and he's teaching online for EEFC four Wednesdays in January, 5-6:15pm PT. I just signed up! More info and registration.
petraChapters: 1/1
Fandom: DCU (Comics)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage Sex
Relationships: Bruce Wayne/Everyone's Mother
Characters: Bruce Wayne, John Grayson, Mary Grayson, Barbara Eileen Gordon, Jim Gordon (DCU), Sheila Haywood, Catherine Todd, Willis Todd, Crystal Brown, David Cain, Sandra Wu-San, Oliver Queen, Bonnie King-Jones, Sandra Moonday Hawke, Diana (Wonder Woman), Clark Kent, Talia al Ghul, Isis (DC Comics), Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake, Janet Drake
Additional Tags: Pairing Tags in End Notes, Bruce Wayne Has a Superpower, Bruce Wayne's A+ Parenting, Drabble Sequence, familial duty, Extremely Dubious Consent, Sex Pollen, Catbaby - Freeform
Series: Part 18 of Fandom Bicycle (One Character/Everybody Else)
Summary:
In which the parentage of various heroes is elucidated and the answer to "Who's your daddy?" is definitively: "Batman."
sixbeforelunchOur Groves Were Planted to Console (17711 words) by ChronicBookworm
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Mansfield Park - Jane Austen, AUSTEN Jane - Works
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Fanny Price/Original Male Character
Characters: Fanny Price, Original Characters, Mrs. Norris (Mansfield Park), Edmund Bertram, Sir Thomas Bertram
Additional Tags: Courtship, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family, Family Dynamics, Slow Burn, Strangers to Friends to Lovers
Summary:
Dr Grant receives a prebendary at Westminster before Mr Crawford can propose to Fanny. Fanny likes the new occupant of Mansfield Parsonage much better than the previous ones.
conulyLhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,
So 'gainst the winter's balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm.
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.
Link
hrjThe Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman -- (audio) The entire Invisible Library series came up on sale as a set on Chirp, and since I'd heard interesting things about it I picked it up. I've only listened to this first volume. Although I find it interesting and imaginative, I kept not getting back to listening to it (hence it took me an entire month to finish). That's made me less interested in trying the next book in the series. I didn't dislike it--it just didn't grab me.
The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Lindz McLeod -- (text) I actually bought this one in both text and audiobook, but since I was already listening to a book of similar genre and setting (see next entry) I went for the text version to keep psychological separation. This is a sapphic Jane Austen-inspired story (as one might guess from the title). I've always felt that Mary Bennet got short shrift in the original book. This story begins well after the end of Pride and Prejudice and has paired her with the now-widowed Charlotte Collins (née Lucas). Mary has the advantage of having acquired a mentor in London who runs a not-very-covertly queer household, which eases the way for Mary and Charlotte to be able to share their attraction and provides a short-cut around the economic challenges for a female couple. I found the story cute and emotionally satisfying although Charlotte occasionally shocked me in blowing off the expected social isolation of recent widowhood.
A Rare Find by Joanna Lowell -- (audio) Another Regency-era sapphic romance, involving an amateur archaeologist and the love/hate relationship with her neighbor. Enjoyable, though a bit over-packed with subplots similarly to the previous book of hers that I've read (A Shore Thing). Lots of occasionally improbable hijinks on the quest for Viking-era artifacts and recognition. There were a few places where my historic sensibilities were trampled on. (You do not just "park" a horse and carriage overnight while you're off canoodling. I mean, maybe a groom was summoned to take care of them? But something it didn't get mentioned.) The conclusion seemed a bit contrived but overall I liked it.
Servant Mage by Kate Elliott -- (text) I have no idea how Elliott managed to pack so much plot and worldbuilding into one tiny novella! Secondary-world quest fantasy with a very relatable protagonist and lots of peril. There are unexpected and satisfying twists. I really hope this is a set-up for more fiction in this world.
The Tapestry of Time by Kate Heartfield -- (audio) Historic fantasy set during World War II focused around the war efforts of a family with various psychic powers who are connected in some way to the Bayeux Tapestry. Told through multiple viewpoints, the novel gradually builds up a fragmentary picture of how all the parts relate until it all comes together. There’s a fair amount of violence and peril, as one might expect in a wartime espionage story, but the ending is satisfying. A strongly woman-centered story with positive queer rep (and resolution). Heartfield writes dense, twisty books that can take some concentration but I’ve enjoyed every one that I’ve tackled.
Murder by Post by Rachel Ford -- (text) This fairly short story introduces the continuing detective couple, Meredith and Alec Thatch, set in the wake of World War I in England. Alec is passing as a man in order for them to marry, but is not presented as transgender as far as I can tell. This adds an extra element of risk and danger when the resident of a neighboring flat is found dead with signs of poison. This is a classic cozy-style mystery, with lots of clues and red herrings, allowing the reader to think just one step ahead of the characters. This initial story—really just a novelette—is free on the author’s website. I hope that some day she’ll decide to release the rest of the series more widely than just Kindle Unlimited. It deserves a wider audience. It's really testing my resolve not to buy Amazon-only books unless I'm committed to doing a review.
In August I started two long-term reading projects. Having enjoyed the tv adaptation of the first Murderbot book, I decided to give the series another try (after having bounced off one of the middle books). And I've been enjoying Rachel Fraimow and Emily Tesh's podcast, The Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones so much I decided to do a (possibly non-exhaustive) reading project of Jones's books. I have twelve of her books on my shelves, though I'm not entirely certain I've read all of them, and I hadn't quite connected up which ones were in series and what order they came in. Having very belatedly acquired a local library card, I've been taking advantage of Libby audiobooks to tackle these two projects, which spaces them out nicely, given wait times.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells, Artificial Condition by Martha Wells -- (audio) It's hard to evaluate the first book separate from having seen the tv series first. It was interesting both how closely the series followed the plot and the places it diverged. Having more details on all the characters (and there are a lot of them for a novella), the story began to grow on my seriously by the second book. It helped that it didn't feel like it was wall-to-wall combat scenes like my first (out of order) encounter with the series. Artificial Condition had a more mystery-like plot, which I enjoyed.
A Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones -- (audio) Young adult. This seems to be a very typical Jones set-up: a disfunctional family with the least-regarded kid as the protagonist. (That's all my notes say. I confess that some of her books have now run into each other in my memory.)
Oops, almost forgot one of my August books!
Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie -- (audio) A short fiction collection, with some stories tying in to her Imperial Radch universe and others feeling like they're part of some other connected setting. Leckie writes the most vivid and believable truly alien characters I've encountered since back when I was reading a lot of C.J. Cherryh in the '90s. The title story is a great example.
On Audiobooks
One of the things I cut back on in preparation for my retirement was my Audible subscription. (I had the three-books-a-month level.) That's changed my audiobook consumption somewhat. What I borrow from Libby is a bit random, not simply because I tend to only put one book at a time on my wait list, rather than having several lined up in Audible, but because the types of books available are different. As I've previously mentioned, I've also been buying audiobooks from Chirp, but primarily using it for random discovery within their sale books. When I decide to outright buy a audiobook these days, I'll try Apple Books first (because: Amazon). Very much like my approach to ebooks, I dislike having books on multiple platforms because I lose track of what's where. But I can't really escape that, alas.
Why do I do so much of my reading in audio? Mostly because I do so much print and e-text reading for the Lesbian Historic Motif Project. Also, between bicycling a couple hours a day and yard work, I have a lot of contexts when I can multi-task audio. Another factor is my aging eyes. When I'm focusing on something close up for an extended period of time--whether it's my LHMP reading, or needlework, or whatever, my eyes take up to an hour to recover and be able to focus at other distances properly. It's annoying. And I can't avoid it for the LHMP work. Audio avoids adding annoyance. (Unintentional alliteration.)
Anyway, enough for now. Tomorrow I'll do my Inventing the Renaissance review, which I plan to post widely. When I first started doing this catch-up book posts, I also disseminated them to several review sites, but that got a bit exhausting and awkward. (I discovered that there's a limit to how many book reviews you can post to Amazon on a single day. A good thing, probably, but hard to keep track of when I'm doing catch-up reviews.)
kaberettMy mother has today loaned me some knee-high compression socks in a fun design and... the amount of presyncope I've been getting on standing up from squatting is approximately None, despite feeling while squatting like It's Gonna Be A Bad One When I Stand Up. So I'm probably going to be buying myself more of them as my mother's present to me for this winterval.
Obviously I was delighted when I got to page 7 and found the rainbow...
brickhousewenchI hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, whether you celebrate or not. At least it was a day off!
rolanniSarah has taken her vacuum and gone off into the frigid sunny day. It is now mine to put the house back together and to get with my list of Adulting Tasks.
While Sarah was here, I tinkered with what I wrote yesterday, found it mostly good, and pasted those sections into the WIP, which now stands at!
A whopping 114,775 words.
I'd like to say that I'm in the home stretch now, but i may be deluding myself. I need to sit down and count scenes. But not right now.
#
I have done All of The Adulting. I have typed "Sharon Lee and Steve Miller" so many times I feel like a high school girl decorating her notebooks with the name of That Boy She Likes.
I daresay there is still more adulting that will catch up with me next week. For instance, I'm not really quite sure how I'm to pay off this "loan" for the new doors. However! It's interest-free until September, so I have Some Time to figure it out.
Funny story there. My contact at Andersen Windows wrote in answer to one of my questions, and added a PS: "It took me a minute, but I remember reading your books at my library when I was a kid. Thank you for being part of my childhood."
And on that note, I am done for the day. I may -- I plan! -- to take refuge in the WIP tomorrow (except for 2:30 when I'm supposed to have a Zoom call with a visiting nurse? I wonder why. And also -- is it a visit if it's a Zoom call? Well. I'll either find out or I won't.)
Everybody have a good evening. Stay safe. I'll see you tomorrow.
Oh. I am remiss in my reporting to Tali's Fan Base.
Tali is still working on finding her Best Role in the house, but today, I think we had a breakthrough. Despite her dislike of having people type through her ears, she sat on my lap on two different occasions while I was doing the most stressful bits of Adulting.
Also, I had missed picking up a stuffed bunny this morning. In the course of her rounds, Sarah found it, and put it on the edge of the bed. I had occasion to sit down on the bed. Tali jumped up to be with me, looked at the rabbit, judged it was infringing on her space, but, instead of knocking it brutally to the floor, she picked it up by the ear, carried it over to the other side of the bed and then came back to snuggle against my knee.
Yes, it was almost unbearably cute. And also much appreciated.
G'night.