goodbyebird: Fifth Element: Leeloo stands on the ledge, looking down. (ⓕ Supreme Being)
[personal profile] goodbyebird
❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 16


Scott Pilgrim
Afternoon Delights by [archiveofourown.org profile] wakeupnew (1,033 words). A good Wallace and Scott interaction never fails to cheer me up.
There is a bang.

The door, he realizes fuzzily. Possibly -- hitting something?? Definitely opening really loudly. He really wishes it wasn't doing that. He should probably start locking it while he's sleeping.

"I thought your shit had supposedly been gotten together, guy," says someone, who flings himself down on the sofa that Scott uses for a bed, hard enough that the cushions bounce under both of them. "What are you doing asleep at 3:00 on a sunny Saturday afternoon?"

"Frrrrsleeping," Scott groans indignantly, and then Wallace plucks the pillow off his head and out of his arms. Scott tries to grab it back without opening his eyes, and his hands mostly just flail ineffectually against Wallace's jeans.

"Whoa there, tiger," Wallace drawls. "I have a boyfriend now; let's keep it PG." He drops the pillow on Scott's chest. If it's possible to drop a pillow with force, Wallace does it. "You know, considering that you're the all-time evil-ex-fighting champion
and the best fighter in the greater Toronto metropolitan area, it was very easy to pull that away from you."

Me-and-media update

Dec. 17th, 2025 11:17 am
china_shop: An orange cartoon dog waving, with a blue-green abstract background. (Bingo!)
[personal profile] china_shop
Previous poll review
In the Mind's eye poll, 22.4% of respondents said their mind's eye is as vivid as IMAX (wow!), 20.7% said pretty vivid, 25.9% said they can visualise if they work at it, and 22.4% said it's a bit patchy/vague. Nearly fourteen percent, including me, have no mind's eye. (I do occasionally see things in my dreams, eg, wake up with the memory of an orange cat, so I voted "other" as well.)

In ticky-boxes, spices (56.9%) came second to hugs (67.2%), followed by being able to name characters from Winnie-the-Pooh (39.7). Thank you for your votes!!

Reading
I was trying to write romance for Yuletide, and digressive murder mysteries were not helping my subconscious to deliver the romance beats/pacing, so I stepped away from Murder Must Advertise (Peter Wimsey) for a while and read a Jennifer Crusie instead. Not one of her better ones, but I've read the better ones so many times... I haven't returned to Murder Must Advertise yet, but I will (and I'll have forgotten everything, oh well).

In audio, I'm relistening to The Wedding People by Alison Espach, read by Helen Laser. It's so good! Phoebe's POV is specific and observational. As I said last time I read it, "Give me all the middle-aged women's midlife crises! Warning for suicidal protagonist, but the book is overall life-affirming."

Kdramas
Still loving Knight Flower. It's adorable and dramatic and silly, with many great women. Competent goofballs FTW! And Andrew and I started Jeongnyeon: A Star Is Born, set in the 1950s after the Korean war, about an all-female theatre troupe. It is fabulous, incredibly gay, and I love everything about it. See also "so many great women!" Moon Okgyeong is mesmerising, ahhhh, I totally understand why everyone's smitten with her (or is it him? or them?). We are racing through it (by our standards).

Other TV
We finished Down Cemetery Road, and I want more, especially of Emma Thompson as Zoe. Finished The Lowdown with Ethan Hawke. We're still going on Pluribus, which continues to be fascinating, and Prehistoric Planet. (My Apple+ subscription runs out on Sunday.) We finished the available episodes of Stranger Things, and I have Robin, Will and Max tied for first place as MVP.

I'm having a bit of trouble with season 3 of The Cleaner, but we might watch some more. And then there's Krapopolis, which is mixing things up this season. My sister and I are still watching Fringe and Bluey.

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, Letters from an American, Cross Party Lines, some Brandon Sanderson youtube lectures.

Online life
I am seriously not keeping up with Dreamwidth or my inbox. Sorry! I keep opening things in tabs to read/reply to later, but I'm going to have to give myself an amnesty and just close a bunch of them.

I'm enjoying the hockey show squee on my reading page, and though I don't know if the show will be for me, I plan to take a look at some point, just in case.

Writing/making things
I had a good writing run in November, but we got some bad news and now brain is refusing to brain, stories are refusing to story, sentences are refusing, etc. I ended up defaulting on Yuletide, though there is still a chance I'll finish the story.

I am enjoying doodling, though -- it's freeing not having a clue what I'm doing. I posted one pic to Tumblr and it got notes and everything, and I just posted another to [community profile] fan_flashworks. (I bought an ancient second-hand flatbed scanner for $15, but I couldn't convince my computer to recognise it, so I guess I'll continue to photograph my sketches for now, even though it messes with the colour balance. I don't know how long this art phase will last, so investing in a newer scanner seems premature.)

Life/health/mental state things
I've been staying up too late lately (including to write an angry submission on a stupid roading project), and it's taking its toll. Offline things are a bit stressful and distracting (stuck in a waiting phase). Summer keeps coming and going. Christmas is imminent.

I need to get more active here on Dreamwidth again. *clings to you all*

Goals
Maybe I should make some of these for next year? Hm.

Good things
The boy! The cat! The house! Coloured pencils and a sketchbook and an ArtLine pen. TV that centres female characters. Also: Guardian! The slo-mo rewatch. ♥ ♥ ♥ Christmas mince pies. Early Christmas present bone-conduction earphones (after years of using this kind of earpiece, now I have stereo sound!).

Poll #33963 dance dance revolution
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7


Have you danced this week?

View Answers

yes, with other people
0 (0.0%)

yes, with a pet or other animal
0 (0.0%)

yes, on my own
2 (28.6%)

kind of / only briefly
2 (28.6%)

no / not yet
4 (57.1%)

other
0 (0.0%)

ticky-box full of "Fighting!" (화이팅!)
1 (14.3%)

ticky-box full of books borrowed from an acquaintance quite some time ago, which really need to be returned but it's super awkward
0 (0.0%)

ticky-box full of enthusiastically and fervently loving what you love
3 (42.9%)

ticky-box full of giant prehistoric otters roaming the savannas
4 (57.1%)

ticky-box full of hugs, so many hugs
2 (28.6%)

[syndicated profile] in_the_pipeline_feed

Here’s a neat look at microbial natural products from a chemical diversity standpoint. Of course, natural products have a fearsome (and well-earned) reputation for displaying structures that we humans would never have gotten around to making - or even thinking of - but once you get that internalized, there are some interesting patterns and lessons.

The author (Roger Linington at Simon Fraser Univ.) is also looking at two trends that at first seem to be at odds with each other: the bulk of newly described natural products (from microorganisms here, but I believe that this applies to other sources as well) are variations on scaffolds that have already been described. But at the same time, genomics studies suggest that there must be many more as-yet-unseen structures waiting for us out there. Perhaps these are produced at very low levels, or only under certain conditions (the various explanations for “cryptic natural products”). But there are a great many more apparent biosynthetic gene clusters out there than there are actual natural products, no matter what.

If you look through the whole Natural Product Atlas database in terms of chemical similarity, you find under this paper’s (reasonable) criteria that there the 36,454 compounds therein generate 4,148 clusters of two or more compounds, and those account for about 30,000 of the total (meaning that about 6,000 of them are actually singletons with no close structural relatives, or not yet). About 1200 of the clusters have five or more members; the median is 3. Inside a given cluster, even the ones with a large number of members, it’s very much “variations on a theme”, with comparatively minor changes.

But those known variations are almost always just a tiny fraction of what would be possible, and the natural products whose biosynthetic pathways are known illustrate that. The polyketides, for example, are a well-represented group in the Atlas, with 312 16-membered macrolactones (for example). But that’s nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands of possible and easily plausible structures that could exist. As the paper notes, though, the number of natural products that we actually see is constrained not just by what is possible, but what is retained in nature (presumably because it’s been found to be useful). And they are of course also constrained by how we isolate and identify them, including where we look, the extraction and purification procedures we use, and our ability to decipher their structures.

There are some interesting trends over time. That percentage of singleton compounds has remained roughly the same over the last fifty years, although the percentage of molecules that were singletons at the time of their discovery has slowly gone down. That last effect suggests that by now we have discovered a good percentage of the microbial natural product scaffolds that we are equipped to find. But we also have to remember that many natural products are discovered as part of a small group right from the start - and the number that have remained singletons for decades stands as a reminder of what natural product diversity is capable of.

So there’s still a lot out there, but by this time we might well be generating even more natural-product-ish diversity on our own by synthesis - that is, exploring that huge chemical space that seems to be unused in nature. We will probably find that some of is unused for good reason, because it doesn’t seem to do much, but the flip side of that argument is that we have uses for things that nature has never needed. 

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve seen a declaration of a revival in interest in natural products (and this paper adds another such to the pile!) What’s for sure, though, is that they have never gone away, and they’re a long way from ever doing so. They aren’t as central to drug discovery as they were decades (centuries!) ago, but irrelevance is nowhere in sight.

merricatb: Image of Rajalagang (Complicated1)
[personal profile] merricatb posting in [community profile] smallfandomfest
Title: Ringing in the Holidays
Author: MerricatB
Fandom: Sense8
Pairing/Characters: Rajan/Wolfgang/Kala
Rating/Category: Teen & Up
Prompt: Sense8, Rajan/Wolfgang/Kala, Domesticity
Spoilers: Whole series
Summary: A holiday trip to the Bavarian Alps turns into something more.
Notes/Warnings: N/A

Read on AO3

Maybe seeing some connections?

Dec. 16th, 2025 07:49 pm
oursin: Photograph of a statue of Hygeia, goddess of health (Hygeia)
[personal profile] oursin

I will concede that this piece on sperm donation is not about dodgy docs or freelance 'donors' but it still all sounds fairly spooky: Why are sperm donors having hundreds of children? Because while, okay, some criteria seem reasonable:

Rules vary across the world, but in the UK you also have to be relatively young - aged 18-45; be free of infections like HIV and gonorrhoea, and not be a carrier of mutations that can cause genetic conditions like cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy and sickle cell disease.

Errrr: don't I recollect seeing somewhere that the gene that conveys sickle cell, is actually protective against ?malaria so it was/is actually beneficial in certain environments - and it was like haemophilia that you had to get it from both sides for the dangers to show up?
From this small pool of donors, some men's sperm is just more popular than others.
Donors are not chosen at random. It's a similar process to the savage reality of dating apps, when some men get way more matches than others.... "You know if they're called Sven and they've got blonde hair, and they're 6 ft 4 (1.93m) and they're an athlete, and they play the fiddle and speak seven languages - you know that's far more attractive than a donor that looks like me," says male fertility expert Prof Allan Pacey, pictured, who used to run a sperm bank in Sheffield.

And how much of that is down to environment, hmmmmm? Or at least, non-genetic factors.

I am over here muttering 'Morlock Power!'

On men spreading it about, historically speaking: the challenges of illegitimacy when exploring genealogy and how to find that shadowy figure who is not on the birth certificate/in the baptismal register. (With luck he had a bastard sworn upon him when that was a thing, otherwise it's a lot more work and a lot of surmising.)

Let's blame the woman, let's let's let's, she probably did something wrong: Marked: Birthmarks and Historical Myths of Maternal Responsibility - which just mutatates and mutates, no?

A conversation with historian Dagmar Herzog on Fascism’s Body Politics and disability under fascism in her new book, The New Fascist Body

And I think relating to all these sorts of issues: Reproductive norms: stigma and disruptions in family-building:

Our expectations of conception, reproduction, and family-building are imbued with reproductive norms. In our younger years, we may imagine and expect that we will have a certain number of children at specific ages or points in the life-course, and in particular circumstances. We may think that conception will be straightforward, pregnancy will pass without complications, and our children will be healthy and without disabilities or impairments. We may have hazy, dreamy ideas of what our children will be like and perhaps more defined ideas of what we will be like as parents.

Tuesday, 16th December 2025

Dec. 16th, 2025 03:04 pm
beck_liz: The TARDIS in space (DW - TARDIS in Space)
[personal profile] beck_liz posting in [community profile] doctor_who_sonic
Editor's Note: If your item was not linked, it's because the header lacked the information that we like to give our readers. Please at least give the title, rating, and pairing or characters, and please include the header in the storypost itself, not just in the linking post. For an example of what a "good" fanfic header is, see the user info. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-Dreamwidth Links
The Doctor Who Companion: Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill to Launch New Doctor Who Podcast, With Steven Moffat as Guest!
Doctor Who News: Black Archive #80: Mawdryn Undead
Blogtor Who: Video of the Day – The War Between The Land And The Sea: Sneak Peek, 2025
Blogtor Who: Review of The War Between the Land and the Sea Soundtrack
Blogtor Who: Video of the Day – Doctor Who: Highlights from The Giggle, 2023
Blogtor Who: Video of the Day – The War Between The Land And The Sea, 2025
Blogtor Who: Review of The War Between the Land and the Sea: The Deep

Fanfiction
Complete
Not That Old by [personal profile] badly_knitted (G | Clara Oswald, Twelfth Doctor)

Communities & Challenges
[community profile] dw100 announces Challenge #1070: ballistic

If you were not linked, and would like to be, contact us in the comments with further information and your link.

Is it Art...or Trash?

Dec. 16th, 2025 07:31 pm
[syndicated profile] metafilter_feed

Posted by sacrifix

Sacrifice your favorite.

Enter your favorite cultural work (book, movie, video game, etc.) and instantly find out if you have good taste.
[syndicated profile] otw_news_feed

Posted by Elintiriel

The Randall Morgan Memorial Archive, a Queer As Folk (US) fanfiction archive, is being imported to the Archive of Our Own (AO3).

This memorial account was set up with the assistance of Open Doors and Irishcaelan, the maintainer of Randall’s personal website, Randall’s Rambles. Randall also wrote under the pseudonym Brian Hennessey. Randall Morgan was taken from us in 2013, and this site is a permanent place where the fanworks he so loved to create will go on.

Open Doors will be working with Irishcaelan to import Randall Morgan’s works into a separate memorial account on the Archive of Our Own. As part of preserving his works in their entirety, all graphics currently in his works will be hosted on the OTW’s servers, and embedded in their own AO3 work pages.

We will begin importing works by Randall Morgan to the AO3 after December. You will find them on the RandallMorgan_memorial account.

We’d also love it if fans could help us preserve the story of Randall Morgan and Randall’s Rambles on Fanlore. If you’re new to wiki editing, no worries! Check out the new visitor portal, or ask the Fanlore Gardeners for tips.

We’re honored to be able to help preserve the works of Randall Morgan, and while we mourn the loss of Randall, we also realize that we are fortunate that he had a friend who was given permission to collect and preserve his works on the AO3 so that they will not be lost. Thinking about the death of a fandom friend may be difficult, but it can also be an opportunity to consider what will happen to your fanworks and accounts and those of your friends after your deaths. The Archive of Our Own has an option to name a Fannish Next of Kin, someone who would be able to gain access to your accounts in the case of your death or incapacitation. By naming someone who can act on your behalf, you can decide ahead of time how you want your AO3 accounts handled going into the future.

– The Open Doors team and Irishcaelan

Commenting on this post will be disabled in 14 days. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments regarding this import after that date, please contact Open Doors.

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


How great would it be to talk with animals, through magic or technology or… whatever?

Five Books About Conversing With Animals
[syndicated profile] metafilter_feed

Posted by Carillon

If you're one of those first-timers, learn from my mistakes. You do not have to order the Heinz ketchup flight. You do not have to buy the Taylor Swift cocktail that tastes like a candle and is garnished with a flaming Brillo pad. You do not have to sacrifice your servers' eyebrows at the altar of the tableside flambé. Above all, you do not have to "come here for the bit." The bit just isn't that interesting.

Much of the menu at 1587 Prime reads like magnetic poetry for people with expense accounts. If you'd like, you can order a black truffle grilled cheese ($27), truffle fettuccine ($39), tuna tartare with a truffle ponzu ($29), fried chicken with truffle honey ($25). You could not bring a truffle pig within a mile of this place; it would die instantly from a seizure. Wagyu? You got it. There's wagyu pastrami ($42), a wagyu cheesesteak ($65), a bowl of wagyu meatballs and spaghetti for two ($68). There's a wagyu carpaccio ($33) that also has black truffle sliced thickly over the top, like very expensive bagel chips. Even dishes without any obvious high-end flourishes are given a luxury veneer. I liked the homey roast chicken ($37), which had crisp skin and a simple, savory pan sauce. For some reason, the restaurant calls it "marble chicken." "You've heard of 'chicken under a brick,'" my server said. "Well, this is chicken cooked under a marble slab." "Is the chicken actually cooked under a marble slab?" I asked. "No."