Snowflake Challenge #13

Jan. 26th, 2026 05:05 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi: snowflake (snowflake)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
Snowflake Challenge: A mug of coffee or hot chocolate with a snowflake shaped gingerbread cookie perched on the rim sits nestled amidst a softly bunched blanket. A few dried orange slices sit next to it.

TALK ABOUT A COMMUNITY SPACE YOU LIKE. It doesn’t need to be your favorite, or the one where you spend the most time (although it certainly can be). Maybe it’s even one that you’ve barely visited. But talk about that space and how it helps support fannish community.

I like the [community profile] get_knitted crafting comm on DW. There are a lot of very talented folks who always have a least one (if not a host) of projects going on. I like reading about their progress and how they overcome obstacles and sometimes seeing photos of really beautiful things.

FTH 2026 Signups Are Open!

Jan. 26th, 2026 05:10 pm
[personal profile] fthmods posting in [community profile] fandomtrumpshate

Do you create fanart, fanfic, podfics, videos, or any other kind of digital fanwork? Do you have services you can offer your fellow creators such as betaing, typesetting, research, or sensitivity reading? Do you want to use any of this to raise money for progressive causes?

If so, welcome to the 10th annual Fandom Trumps Hate auction!

Some light reading before you go straight to the signup form - even if you've participated before, please check these out!

One change to note: If you would like to offer your fanwork in "Any fandom," the options have changed. We have summarized those changes here.

If you've read all that and are ready to proceed, the 2026 signup form is here!

The main auction is only for digital fanworks - do you create physical fan crafts that you'd like to raise money with? Check out our Fan Crafts Bazaar!


Short: Criminal Minds

Jan. 26th, 2026 04:58 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi: colourful squares (ittensquare)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
In order to break up the Snowflake posts, I looked through my YT history for something fun. I like this short of a scene from an early episode of Criminal Minds. I think I remember watching this on TV back in the day.

The ladies discover Brad (a Real FBI agent) at a bar.

Snowflake Challenge #12

Jan. 26th, 2026 04:33 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi: snowflake (snowflake)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
Snowflake Challenge: A mug of coffee or hot chocolate with a snowflake shaped gingerbread cookie perched on the rim sits nestled amidst a softly bunched blanket. A few dried orange slices sit next to it.

Challenge #12

Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life.


1. My DW friends enhance my life. I like reading about your lives, what you're doing, the changes you face and how you deal with things, and I like the things you share, links, photos, etc. I don't know that most of you enhance my fandom life because most of us don't share a fandom. But you are nice people and interesting people and we find connection. This is my only social media-type account. I've never had a facebook or twitter or tumblr or anything else so this is it and it is enough for me.

2. This year and next year, I am planning to actually engage in fannish activities in RL with people with whom I share a fandom so that will be different. I hope those plans come to fruition and we have fun.

3. There are so many content creators, the gif makers and the vidders and the ficcers and the fan artists and the fan crafters, who enhance my life with their art (in the general sense of the word) on YT and tumblr and etsy and AO3 and DW and, once upon a time, LiveJournal. And the mods of comms and exchanges.

THANK YOU! The world is better with you (and your art) in it.
[personal profile] fthmods posting in [community profile] fandomtrumpshate

The Fandom Trumps Hate Fan Crafts Bazaar

Every year, we get emails and comments from people who make physical fan crafts or art who want to list their creations in FTH. There are a variety of reasons that non-digital fanworks are not a good fit for the way we run the main FTH auction, but in 2020 we introduced the Fan Crafts Bazaar, a way for fan crafters to support our orgs parallel to the main auction. If you'd like to see what it looks like, you can view last year's Bazaar here.

2026 Fan Crafts Bazaar calendar:

Monday, Jan 26th - Signups open
Friday, Feb 27th - Craft Bazaar opens
Tuesday, March 3rd - Signups close
Wednesday, Mar 18th - Craft Bazaar closes (though individual stalls may close sooner)
Read more... )

Read more... )


[personal profile] wychwood's 2025 book awards

Jan. 26th, 2026 09:10 pm
wychwood: black-and-white Magneto is an oldfashioned boy (X-Men - Magneto oldfashioned)
[personal profile] wychwood

176 books read in 2025 - just under the long-term average (182) but my highest since 2020.

stats ) awards )

My book of the year

A tough one! I'm not sure anything really stands out. But I think I've spent more time thinking about Augustine the African than the others, so maybe that.

Science

Jan. 26th, 2026 03:16 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
The magnetic secret inside steel finally explained

For years, scientists noticed that magnetic fields could improve steel, but no one knew exactly why. New simulations reveal that magnetism changes how iron atoms behave, making it harder for carbon atoms to slip through the metal. This slows diffusion at the atomic level and alters steel’s internal structure. The insight could lead to more efficient, lower-energy ways to make stronger steel.


And there's a hint about one way that secret but mundane smithcraft, as well as magical or superpowered manipulation of materials and forces, can create objects that work better.

(no subject)

Jan. 26th, 2026 09:00 pm
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
[personal profile] beccaelizabeth
I finished the season of Legends of Tomorrow.
The theological incoherence has annoyed me yet again.
The ethics depends on the physics and the physics is never consistently defined.
I purely do not understand why what the Legends did is supposed to be the right thing to do.
Even more, I don't see why it is right this time and the opposite is right when Ollie does it.
Except the thing where the writers are very plural and can just do that.

So.


Annoyed me.
oursin: Photograph of Stella Gibbons, overwritten IM IN UR WOODSHED SEEING SOMETHIN NASTY (woodshed)
[personal profile] oursin

Should we sell our kidneys?

My feeling, on finding somebody who is apparently a reader in political theory at a well-respected institution of Teh Highah Learninz positing this, is that he may have read a lot of political theory, poor lamb, but maybe he should spend some time with dystopian science fiction if he's going to contemplate these sort of questions.

I suppose, with the Organ Donation register, there is an issue that a) it is Opt-In and b) presumably by the time many people reach that state when their organs come up for donation, those organs are probably past their Best Before date.

(I just now, in connection with an entirely unrelated transaction with a government body, was solicited to sign up with the Organ Donation Register. Already have, thanks, if anyone will want my tired old organs when the time comes.)

And on the intrusion of Commerce into this matter, has this person considered the sorts of things that have been happening - only, one admits, affecting the bodies of wymmynz? - over selling their eggs, or being surrogates, and the stories one hears are Not Pretty.

He might also consider Richard Titmuss' famous 1970 work The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy on blood donation:

[T]he author compares blood donation in the US and UK, contrasting the British system of reliance on voluntary donors to the American one in which the blood supply is in the hands of for-profit enterprises, concluding that a system based on altruism is both safer and more economically efficient.

(Also I am not sure about his understanding of the dynamics at play here:
In the 18th century, for example, some viewed being paid to sing as akin to prostitution, and professional opera singers, particularly women, could be deemed morally suspect. At that time, therefore, it might have seemed appropriate to subject professional singing to legal strictures, just like prostitution.

I really think this was - dependent upon local legal systems of course, but, really, don't get me started on that - much more about social stigma. Which adhered to publicly performing women for a lot longer, mate.)

(I'm also thinking - has this one cropped up on [community profile] agonyaunt or have I seen it elsewhere - of that scenario in which member of a family - even an estranged member of family - is being heavyed into being a donor for a relative because they are A Match. Was it even child adopted but later traced?)

Lake Lewisia #1361

Jan. 26th, 2026 12:22 pm
scrubjayspeaks: Town sign for (fictional) Lake Lewisia, showing icons of mountains and a lake with the letter L (Lake Lewisia)
[personal profile] scrubjayspeaks
The winter Calvinball tournament will begin this week, so gather up your wickets, bats and rackets, ping-pong balls, and other traditional equipment, and see if you can find your way to the tournament area. That is the first rule change from last season: the last participant to find the Secret Field takes a penalty and must play the first inning while transformed into a random mammal. And I have just been informed that game announcers receive bonus points, so excuse me while I barricade my booth in preparation to defend my position.

---

LL#1361

Animal Intelligence

Jan. 26th, 2026 02:02 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This video shows a cow performing versatile tool use to scratch herself with a broom.  Note that cows are already enthusiastic tool users of equipment provided by humans, such as pressure-activated brushes and voluntary milking systems.

An interesting point that nobody has mentioned: cows have prehensile tongues. A prehensile appendage is any body part flexible and strong enough to grab or manipulate objects. Watch Veronica pick up the broom. She doesn't use her teeth or even her lips. She uses her tongue. Prehensility is actually a strong indicator of intelligence, because it allows a creature to lift, move, or use things much more effectively. Any time you see that feature, you should check for intelligence, because it is probably higher than average.

Want to play at home? If you have a cow, or know someone who does, then get a small broom like the one in the video. Use it a few times to groom the cow so she learns how useful it is. Then place it within her reach to see if she tries using it to scratch herself. This is probably more effective with just one or two cows, rather than a herd where they tend to groom each other's hard-to-reach spots. You can also watch cows that you see in other places.

Airdrop!

Jan. 26th, 2026 08:10 pm
philomytha: Biggles jumping over a sofa (Follows On hotel)
[personal profile] philomytha
We have had our annual Biggles Airdrop with 24 excellent fics to read, which considering only a dozen people were signed up suggests that the fandom's enthusiasm is still going strong.

I received two amazing gifts:

Odette, a von Zoyton-centric fic in which he provides a bitingly hilarious outsider perspective on von Stalhein's unhinged Biggles Obsession, with superb characterisation, glittering prose and EvS asking von Zoyton for flying lessons. 7000 words, background Biggles/EvS insanity about each other.

A New Life, a gorgeously written vignette looking at Fritz visiting his Uncle Erich later in canon, with a truly adorable surprise for him. 700 words, background Biggles/EvS.

And I wrote two fics:

Soft Landings (3000 words, gen), slight Hatchet AU where Algy is the first person to encounter von Stalhein.

dialogue for one voice (with chorus), (2000 words, Biggles/EvS/Marie as a work in progress), an additional scene from the ending of Looks Back, Marie sitting with Biggles in hospital.

And while this was not a gift for me, I do have to give honourable mention to International Relations, which is 15k of Marcel Brissac cheerfully fucking his way through everyone in Biggles's orbit starting with Raymond, and is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, and also makes it plain that Bertie has been talking to the fitters from 'The Raid'!

Many thanks to [personal profile] sholio and [personal profile] sheron for organising it all, I had a wonderful time!

Snowflake Challenge: day 12 and 13

Jan. 26th, 2026 05:47 pm
shewhostaples: A cheerful bird (cheerful)
[personal profile] shewhostaples
Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!

Dear friends (mostly, but not all, on Dreamwidth) who...

... are really enjoying that ice hockey series
... are really enjoying playing ice hockey themselves
... are really looking forward to the Winter Olympics
... are reading that book that everyone is reading
... are reading that book that everyone read three years ago
... are reading books that nobody's read for a hundred years
... are reading things I wrote when I could string more than ten minutes together at a time
... are knee-deep in an obscure spin-off of something I saw once
... are singing or playing
... are listening to other people sing or play
... are going out and eating delicious things
... are cooking delicious things for other people to eat
... are going to interesting places and seeing interesting wildlife and sharing pictures
... are doing small things (or big things) in pursuit of a better world

... I am really enjoying reading about your enjoyment and activity, though I never manage to comment as often as I'd like. Thank you for keeping me in touch with the fandom world!


TALK ABOUT A COMMUNITY SPACE YOU LIKE. It doesn’t need to be your favorite, or the one where you spend the most time (although it certainly can be). Maybe it’s even one that you’ve barely visited. But talk about that space and how it helps support fannish community.

Having talked mostly about Dreamwidth above, I'm going to go super literal here and talk about the bandstand in my home town. It's set at the centre of a park next the river, and every summer Sunday afternoon a different brass band from one of the surrounding towns and villages turns up to give a free concert. Programme-wise, you always know more or less what kind of thing you're going to get: a march or two, some film music, an arrangement of some classic rock, and so on, but since it's never advertised in advance you don't know the specifics. There's always a mixed audience: people who know it's happening and have turned up deliberately; friends of the band; people who were just wandering past and stop to listen; kids playing on the slides. Some people stop for a few minutes and then move on; some stay for the whole thing.

I love the energy of live music, and it's so good to have something that's so very relaxed, so very - literally - open.

(no subject)

Jan. 26th, 2026 12:02 pm
olivermoss: (Default)
[personal profile] olivermoss
* There was a Torrent Takeover Watch Party at Sports Bra yesterday. Seattle was playing Vancouver in Denver, and sadly they lost. But, it was a cool event. The organizers had bingo cards for things that might happen during the game and also handed out Hillary Knight stickers.

There were people at the event I knew, but they were gathered at one table for someone's birthday party. I think one of them was inviting me to sit with them, but I am not joining in on the birthday party of someone I don't know. Maybe it would have been chill, but I've never seen that play out chill.

* This is a wild pull:



Olympic torch bearers have numbers, and they go in order. They put in Hudson in at #87... that's Sidney Crosby's number! Whomst did this? There is no way he was accidentally given the Sidcross number. Especially since he's one of those players who is very associated with his number, it's a whole thing.

* Goaltender Brandon Bussi needs a nickname to call him by. People need to stop trying to talk about how exactly the 'u' should be pronounced and whether his name sounds exactly like Bussy. Different parts of the North America have different vowel sounds and you can't push pronunciation nuance like that because some of those vowel sounds don't actually exist in some regions. Also, AFAIK sounding exactly like Bussy is the correct one, so trying to make Booosy or whatever happen is not going to happen.

Get him a nickname, or live with hearing about people trying to get into Bussy's crease for the next ten years. There is no fixing the situation by trying to push an unusual way to pronounce a vowel.

Signed, someone with unusual vowel sounds in their birth name. West coasters cannot pronounce my birth name the way I do, they don't differentiate between those two sounds, and I never want to have another conversation about it again as long as I live.

Monday Word: Scabrous

Jan. 26th, 2026 02:34 pm
stonepicnicking_okapi: letters (letters)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi posting in [community profile] 1word1day
scabrous [skab-ruhs]

adjective

1. having a rough surface because of minute points or projections.

2. indecent or scandalous; risqué; obscene.

3. full of difficulties.

examples

1. Ryan was forty-five years Gorey's junior, and his scabrous, willfully crude comics cross the self-flagellating confessionalism of underground artists like R. Crumb with the postpunk cynicism of Peter Bagge, the grunge cartoonist known for his bilious, bleakly funny strip, Hate. Born to be Posthumous by Mark Dery

2. O’Neill resolves the triangular conflict with a combination of religious fervor, metaphoric brooding and scabrous humor. "Michelle Williams finds the modern spiritual essence of Anna Christie at St. Ann’s Warehouse" by Charles McNulty. Los Angeles Times. 15 Dec 2025.

origin
Latin scabr-, scaber rough, scurfy; akin to Latin scabere to scratch

it's monday, crafting time

Jan. 26th, 2026 02:41 pm
unicornduke: (Default)
[personal profile] unicornduke
Hey all, if you'd like to join the crafting hangout, it is tonight from 6-8pm ET!
 
Video encouraged but not required!
 
Topic: Crafting Hangout
Time: Mondays 6:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
 
Join Zoom Meeting
 
Meeting ID: 973 2674 2763

rionaleonhart: goes wrong: unparalleled actor robert grove looks handsomely at the camera. (unappreciated in my own time)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
Here's another Goes Wrong fic that grew out of a fill for the [community profile] threesentenceficathon! All the fanfiction I've been writing has pushed Robert Grove from the fifth-most-tagged Goes Wrong Show character on AO3 up to third place, and I am drunk with power.

I think I might have accidentally written something cute. I promise this wasn't my intention.


Title: Gone Astray
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Robert/Chris
Wordcount: 3,000
Summary: After The Spirit of Christmas, someone has to get Robert home safely, and the role falls to an unwilling Chris.


Gone Astray )

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