jack

Way back in mid-December, the Quinnipiac University Poll, widely considered the gold standard in polls, was reporting Trump approval rates at 35% and disapproval rates at 57%. Quinnipiac hasn't done a poll since, but other subsequent polls are roughly in this range, too.

Does this mean Democrats will win the midterm elections?

Honestly, I don't know.

Most people vote from their wallets. And recently, Trump has floated two proposals in his unmedicated, late-night social media rants that, if implemented, could save these prospective voters a whole lotta bank: (1) banning private hedge funds from buying residential homes and (2) capping credit card debt at 10%.

Neither of these ideas will be implemented, I suspect. But that second one in particular is aimed straight at the populist base.

###

Also, the average American taxpayer will be saving on taxes this year. The standard deduction is going up by $750 for everyone, by $1,500 if you're married filing jointly, and by $6,000 if you're over 65. The child tax credit is increasing by $200. Tip income up to $25,000 is protected from taxation; ditto $12,500 in overtime income—particularly interesting if you think of the type of workers (construction workers, nurses, first responders, HVAC workers) who typically earn overtime, i.e. highly skilled workers who, despite the mythologies surrounding them, aren't culturally respected enough to be salaried employees.

If their own taxes drop by a couple of grand, will any of these people really care that billionaires are saving a whole lot more?

I suspect not.

On the other hand, 31% of U.S. tax filers paid no federal income taxes at all. This is the segment targeted by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party because this is the segment that benefits most from cheaper housing and subsidized healthcare. So maybe progressives are on to something from a strictly strategic point of view, as well as a humanitarian point of view. I dunno. The Delphic oracle is on hiatus.

Anyway, I remained hideously depressed all day yesterday.

The gym was crowded with New Year's Resolutioners, and supermarket prices are up by at least 25%, no matter what the official inflation rate is telling you. I bought some stuff at the ShopRite next door to the Schlock office, and I swear to God, their prices were higher than the non-discount grocery store 'cause why not gauge the rubes if they're wandering into your marketing trap, right?

Considering how down I'm feeling, the Work in Progress is going remarkably well. I mean, I have no idea if the prose is any good, but (first draft, first draft, first draft), it is materializing on the page.

I'm currently writing the second of the Hospital in the Time of COVID sections. Scene has to develop relationships with Debbie Reynolds & the New Millennium Kingdom girl, and also explore Grazia's ideas of what being a Good Person entails—picking up random garbage on the street, returning shopping carts to their rightful bin, liking Lost Pet notifications on Facebook, etc, etc, etc. At some point, as she gets nuttier, Grazia will begin anthropomorphizing her relationship with the universe, such that Neal notices and becomes alarmed in the phone conversation that fades out the section.

altamira16

Susan Lieu is the daughter of two people who fled Communism in Vietnam. She grows up in the family's nail salon in California with her siblings, her parents, and her aunts.

( Something bad happens. )

In college, Lieu joins a cult as she searches for a mother figure.

She turns a reflection on loss, where she is going through the stages of grief slowly without the support of her family, into a performance that is finally turned into this book.

Her relationship with food throughout this book made me squeamish. She is overeating because she wants to show obedience, that she will not waste food. Then, she may be overeating because she loves food. Her relatives are constantly body shaming her telling her that she will get fat if she eats too much but also constantly serving delicious food. Life is hard.

james_davis_nicoll

Tales of America's thrilling genocide on and colonization of Mars!

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

raven

Here's a bit of admin I didn't manage to do while I was away. For yuletide this year, I got the following story from

ryfkah:

More A Comment Than A Question (2285 words) by ryfkah
Fandom: The Day Before the Revolution - Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
Characters: Laia Asieo Odo, Sadik (The Dispossessed)

Odo!

“I’m Laia.” If the voice wanted her father, she thought, crossly, it could go and get him; why was it bothering her?

Oh. The voice sounded startled. You’re too small. I got it wrong. Then, hopefully: Do you have any thoughts yet about anarchism and the necessity of constant revolution?

I was caught right in the maelstrom of the day 1 de-anonning - as in, had opened the tab with the author's name on it and then went back to the laptop every few minutes for an hour to look at the recipe in the next tab - and learned later that I had been an unwitting part of a greater scheme of deception! But honestly I was thrilled at the news Becca was writing me regardless, she is the best and this story is wonderful: does such a good job at catching on to the themes of the original, and does this via a funny little time travel scenario that fits brilliantly into the original. I highly recommend it.

I wrote the following stories:

Flowering (4850 words) by raven
Fandom: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Relationships: Cat Chant & Christopher Chant
Characters: Cat Chant, Christopher Chant, Millie Chant
Additional Tags: Coming of Age, Queer Themes
Summary:

“Keep the home fires burning, Cat, will you,” Chrestomanci says lazily, and Millie blows Cat a kiss before the portal shuts.

My assigned story, and a couple of people can attest how much I hated it, hated writing it, and how much I wanted to burn it to the ground. I'm in a phase right now where writing fiction is just beyond my ken. It's too hard and it makes my soul ache. But I had been on a podcast, Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones, on an episode about The Lives of Christopher Chant, so I thought I was feeling Chrestomanci sufficiently much to write it. I was not and I could not. But then I missed the deadline for no-fault default, and felt masochistic enough to continue somehow. I eventually resolved to orphan the story once yuletide was over - I have not done this. Quite a lot of people liked it and I'm grateful to them for saying so! But I learned my lesson here about giving up when I'm ahead.

promises made to be broken, made to last (1988 words) by raven
Fandom: Shetland (TV)
Relationships: Ruth Calder/Alison McIntosh
Characters: Ruth Calder, Alison McIntosh
Additional Tags: New Year's Eve, Romance, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft
Summary:

Ruth's not much of a witch, not really. Kneeling beside a corpse on the year’s turn is something any woman can do.

Here's one that was different! I've seen some of this show, I've been to the islands, but hadn't been particularly inspired to write for it. But then

walkthegale was having a bad time just before Christmas, and I'd been promising her something for nearly a year, and, and. On the morning of 24 December I texted her lovely wife with a neverending slew of canon questions and scribbled and scribbled. I got this written finally an hour before the deadline and it was all worth it because C loved her gift and guessed it was me even before the de-anon. I was really pleased this whole thing came off.

ashes, ashes (2099 words) by raven
Fandom: The Incandescent - Emily Tesh
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sapphire “Saffy” Walden/Laura Kenning
Characters: Sapphire “Saffy” Walden, Laura Kenning
Additional Tags: Aftermath, Recovery, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

It was time to go, and Laura said, “Saffy, you could come with me”—and Saffy said maybe, and it meant something but neither of them knew yet what.

I don't know that I have much to say about this one! I wrote it a few months ago, before the creative void, so it was nice to have a story in the archive that I definitely liked that wasn't written in a mad hurry. The recipient didn't show up, but we can't have everything.

sovay

The best thing about a photo I found tonight of John Vickery in 1981 is not that it headcanoned itself instantly as an image of the younger Neroon, it's that I had just been watching him in an American Theatre Wing seminar from that same year and been struck by how little of his older self in or out of character was immediately traceable in his thin collegiate face and especially his light Californian voice and so when looking out of mildly feverish curiosity for his notices that summer as Prince Hal I was really not expecting to find through nothing but chiaroscuro and expression his future Minbari bones.

Offstage, he had reminded me more of Kyle MacLachlan and barely looked old enough to have the bachelor's in mathematics which was part of his origin story. He tells it again in another seminar in 1998 and still has a nervous gesture of touching one of his eyes as if tired or distracted slightly; he's a great fidgeter in front of an off-the-cuff audience. I had gone looking originally for his voice, which turns out not even to be that mid-Atlantic when he's using it for himself. Three decades plus I had to notice this actor with my brain on perpetual standby for B5 and now it has an opinion.

To keep on the theme of theater, I had no idea until her obituary that Tina Packer started her career in the three-quarters burninated 1966 BBC David Copperfield with Ian McKellen and then the much more successfully recovered 1968 Doctor Who: The Web of Fear before she discovered she cared much less for acting than directing or producing, whence Shakespeare & Company. The last time I saw Hugh Whitemore's Breaking the Code was in 2011 at Central Square Theater and they are reviving it this spring with the actor I last saw as Gaveston in the ASP's Edward II in 2017, whom I expect to be a superb Turing and me to leave the theater muttering about Joan Clarke as usual. In lieu of a teleporter, I have to hope for a transfer of this High Noon.

Current Music: Townies, "Elderberry Wine"

calzephyr

Cronometer
https://cronometer.com/

Cronometer has been around for a long time--and it's one of those super nerdy nutrient tracking apps. I've used it on and off because it's so good at doing what it does. It's also Canadian, which means many Canadian brands are in the barcode scanning system. Manually entering nutrition labels was always a huge pain in the ass, and Cronometer's latest version is so easy peasy--photograph the food and it does the work for you.

Cronometer is great if you want to gain, loose, or maintain weight. I use it mostly to track my iron intake these days. You can use it however it works for you :-)

Finch
https://finchcare.com/

I've been using Finch for just over a year. An artist friend raved about it, and it turned out that a lot of people I knew were also using it. You rasie a virtual bird pet from baby to teenager by completing quests. After I had my first iron infusion in December 2024, I really needed to get back on track with life and looking after myself. It's a delightful combination of birds and cuteness. There are many habit forming apps out there, but I never tried one before.

It's a gentle app that will help you accomplish anything you set out to do, whether it's moving more, trying some breathing exercises, or building a daily habit. It's helped me keep up with my rotator cuff exercises and now I'm determined to floss daily :-D

fred_mouse posting in

unclutter

How goes the decluttering? Have you shifted anything out of the house? Found something to sort through? Had thoughts on things you can let go of?

Comments open to locals, lurkers, drive by sticky beaks, and anyone I've forgotten to mention.

Congratulations to everyone who has found and/or disposed on any clutter in the last week!

Optional extra, for those doing the low key January challenge: how go the hobby spaces?

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

beanside

It's Sunday morning at 7 am, and that means it's time to get my journalling on. /random Bake on reference.

After game on Friday, the cough and more problematic hoarse voice came roaring back. I finally had to cancel both games because I had no voice, and I just felt kind of shitty. I felt horribly bad about it, but I just couldn't. Jess convinced me to take the first blast of a steroid dose pack, so I started on that. I was resisting because it makes me moody and bitchy normally. Though as Jess pointed out, I've not taken them with the Astartys or Vyvanse, so the "you must chill" job that it does might blunt some of the side effects. We shall see. I just took my second dose, and my god those things are vile. They have no coating, so they start melting the moment you put them in your mouth, and they are nasty tasting.

Yesterday, I did put on clothes long enough to take my sister to the garage to have her car done. She'll go today to pick it up. She says she'll have BIL take her, but we'll see. I suspect I'll be taking her after game, but we'll see.

I have a game this morning that I'm not dming for, so hopefully that one won't be a problem. I'll just mute until I have to speak, and that'll be fine. This afternoon, I plan to do nothing, except maybe get our Bake Off on. The season's been done for nearly 4 months, I know who wins, but I still want to watch it.

We have another contender in the dress bonanza. I like this one too, but I'm still deciding. Neither of the top contenders have pockets, which is annoying, but I got a little black cross body bag that'll cover me for the basics.

Poll #34069

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

View Respondents

Which dress looks better?

View Answers

1 (14.3%)

6 (85.7%)

I know it's hard to tell, because literally all I did was throw on a bra and the dress. Just imagine it with my hair looking like it's been brushed and with black flats and a pair of nice tights on. (also, tights, nude or sheer black? I can't decide.)

I would also like to do some work on the cruise, so that I can get everyone checked in. I do need to get travel insurance, just in case we get sick in Vancouver, or on the cruise as well. I'm going to compare some plans, and go from there. We're all basically healthy, so it shouldn't be terrible.

For dinner, I actually need to cook. Pork chops with garlic pirogies and sour cream and sauerkraut (if desired). I think it'll be delicious.

Tomorrow shall be work. I'm sure my counterpart will be back, so I'll be doing a little more phones, little less wheeling and dealing, though we'll see. I know I have a few people to call back about their appts to move them to a different location. Certain insurances don't want to allow patients to schedule at hospital connected radiology centers, because there's a facility fee, and they don't want to pay that. But our system is not sophisticated enough to block it, so people book and then I call them and move them. It's a pain in my ass, and the least favorite part of my job. Fortunately, I can also send them messages through the portal, so sometimes I do that as well.

We've got like five patients this week and I've gotten through to one. Which I 100% understand. I don't answer my phone either. Though on most phones, we come up as Johns Hopkins or at least "Medical." So I'd probably answer.

Time to go forth and prepare for this game. Hopefuly, I can make myself heard with my still-hoarse voice. Everyone have a stupendous Saturday!

calzephyr

How two influencers made millions radicalising pregnant women around the world. And the tragedies that followed. A year-long investigation by Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne

Just when you think you've heard it all...along comes this very distressing podcast about two women grifters who sold women worldwide on the idea of unassisted "free birth" (birth without assistance, medical, traditional or otherwise), defrauding women and leading to the unnecessary deaths of many children :S

HUGE content warning for grief, death, and maternal harm.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-birth-keepers-the-guardian-investigates/id1731314182

https://www.theguardian.com/world/series/the-birth-keepers

Current Mood: awake

puddleshark posting in

common_nature

A bright cold morning, the fields silvered with frost, and the paths an entertaining mix of ice and mud.

( Read more... )

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/11/this-waterfall-is-just-my-size

Via Cloudtail the Snow Leopard

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/11/this-waterfall-is-just-my-size

angrboda

Husband is currently putting the very final touches on the plastering in my room. I get to do the cleanup on wednesday and thursday. It works out pretty well actually, because I worked yesterday so I get thursday off instead, and I can just get it over with. He already hovered up most of the dust, so I'm already well helped there. Once that's done, he can paint it (still haven't fully settled on a colour), and then it's getting the new furniture, getting that installed and moving back in. Still haven't managed to have a go at those curtains, though.

It's not going to be today, because there's opera this afternoon. Andrea Chenier, which I had never heard of before, by Giordano, who I had also never heard about before. It was a bit uncertain whether or not we would go what with me having a one day weekend and all, but I was listening to it while at work yesterday and I thought it seemed pretty good. Plus, it's opera in the cinema, so it's a Met production and those are always pretty lavish and worth seeing.

princessofgeeks

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: enthralled

file770_feed

Posted by Mike Glyer

https://file770.com/jonathan-cowie-review-halcyon-years-by-alastair-reynolds/

https://file770.com/?p=127861

Halcyon Years (2025) Alastair Reynolds, Gollancz, £25 / US$38, hrdbk, 326pp, ISBN 978-1-399-61176-3 By Jonathan Cowie: To cut to the chase for Reynolds’ fans, the man is on top form. So regulars can skip the rest of this review, just … Continue reading →

https://file770.com/jonathan-cowie-review-halcyon-years-by-alastair-reynolds/

https://file770.com/?p=127861

file770_feed

Posted by Mike Glyer

https://file770.com/crime-fiction-awards-from-the-last-of-2025/

https://file770.com/?p=127865

Here are the results of the Petrona Award, Ned Kelly Awards, Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers, Scarlett Stiletto Awards, Deutscher Krimipreis, and Crime Reprint of the Year. PETRONA AWARD 2025 The winner of … Continue reading →

https://file770.com/crime-fiction-awards-from-the-last-of-2025/

https://file770.com/?p=127865

lhune posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) Great coffee to wake up properly

2) Dinner at my parents’s place (I hunker for the heath of their woodburner)

3) Good telly this evening

oglaf_comic_feed

https://www.oglaf.com/true-crime-fiction/

sholio

I don't think I posted about this at the time, but there was an absolute odyssey involved in getting the original batch of B5 script books that I ordered.

The original process was this:

I'd known about the existence of the B5 script books vaguely for a while, but hadn't really thought of buying them before. In October, when I came back from traveling, I googled it and found a massive site called "B5 Books" that had authorized editions of all the B5-related books available, which was a lot of them, not just the script books but tons of other stuff as well.

They had closed yesterday.

But wait! They were staying open through the weekend (like 2 more days) because they'd had technical issues. So I splurged and ordered an absolute ton of books (about 2/3 of the total script books out there, mainly focused on episodes I especially wanted to read about). I would have preferred to order just one to find out a) what the books were like, and b) what their customer service was like, but ... closing in 2 days! So I gave them my credit card info for a quantity of books that I don't want to think too closely about.

A month went by.

I got a shipping notice and a tracking number, and and then a box arrived .... with 2 books in it.

I contacted customer service (a bit nervously, in the hopes they'd still actually answer). To their credit, they were very quick to respond; evidently there was a second tracking email I hadn't received for some reason, for the box with most of the rest of the books in it. (They sent me a free digital book to make up for the emotional distress, too - they were really nice.)

This was back in December, and I was leaving on the 13th, Saturday, so I periodically checked the tracking info for the box. It showed up in Fairbanks over the previous weekend, and showed that it was supposed to deliver on Monday.

Monday came and went. About mid-week, the tracking info showed that it had traveled out of Fairbanks again. (Why??) I had visions of the box going all the way back to the sender for some reason. Meanwhile, I had planned to spend the last couple of days before I left diving into my new books, but as the week ticked down and it continued to tease me ... I guess not. Finally, on Friday, I got an actual "out for delivery" notice, and then a notice that a "pick up at post office" slip had been left. Also, Friday was our last day of actual mail delivery (we'd put a hold on it until after Christmas that started on Saturday and went for 2 weeks, i.e. about the amount of time that the post office will hold a box - you know, this box with $100s of books in it). I was headed to the airport Saturday afternoon, but I figured it should be possible to stop by the post office on the way.

I picked up the mail.

No slip.

I thought, okay, maybe I picked up an early batch (yesterday's? our mailbox is on the highway and both the mail delivery and our collection of it is kind of haphazard) so when Orion got home a few hours later, I asked if there had been a slip in the mailbox.

Nope!

So now my package is on hold at the post office, I GUESS, with no ability to redeliver and our mail delivery not starting until after the approximate return to sender date. We hunted all around the mailbox just in case it had been dropped. No slip.

I ended up printing out the tracking number and taking that to the post office on our way to the airport, and that DID work and they DID have the box and I got it, YAY. (Orion said that the slip spontaneously showed up in the mailbox when he was headed home after dropping me off, so WHO KNOWS what was up with that.)

Anyway, all of that ended up working out in the end, and I enjoyed the books so much that I went on Amazon to see if I could find used copies of the ones I didn't have. I ordered a few more, and I just checked the shipping info and discovered that one of them - from a 3rd party Amazon seller - was sent via Fedex and supposedly delivered on Thursday afternoon, i.e. 2 days ago.

Guess what I don't seem to have!

Orion says that Fedex often leaves deliveries in random places around the yard - he's found them on piles of construction supplies, left at the door of the shop instead of the house, etc. Inauspiciously, it snowed a few inches last night, so everything is covered with fresh snow. Also, it was dark. Still, we took flashlights and went and hunted high and low in all the places that a package might be, ranging from likely (covered with snow beside the door) to unlikely but possible (at the doors of the various outbuildings like the greenhouse, on top of random vehicles in the yard) to the highly unlikely (at our road sign, in our mailbox). Not a single sign of it! I don't know if it was delivered to some other house, mistakenly marked as delivered when it's actually fallen under the delivery truck seat, or if a very soggy B5 book is going to turn up four months later when the snow melts, but seriously, WHAT EVEN. I've never had a book go missing like this in all the time I've been ordering used books off Amazon!

Anyway, further updates from the B5 script books are coming soon, and maybe I'll have this particular book eventually, or maybe not.

snickfic

For movie analysis and behind-the-scenes info. (Boy has Youtube been a pain in the butt for me the last couple of days. I assume they're duking it out with my adblock. Ugh.)

Rian Johnson Breaks Down a Scene From 'Wake Up Dead Man'. I rewatched the movie on Christmas and then really enjoyed watching this. Johnson talks a lot more than just the specific scene.

Nosferatu (2024) Kill Count. This movie has really grown on me, and this is one of my favorite Kill Counts that Dead Meat has done in a while. Eggers goes so hard, which means a ton of juicy behind-the-scenes details I didn't know. Maybe time for a rewatch soon.

Network

The Delphic Oracle Is On Hiatus

The Manicurist's Daughter by Susan Lieu

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Yuletide 2025

'Cause your eyes are the green of tornado skies

Two apps for the new year

Weekly(ish) check in

Just one thing: 11 January 2026

I am so spooky, I'm the shit, I am the living aspect of the infinite.

[PODCASTS] The Birthkeepers

January bridleways

This Waterfall Is Just My Size

(no subject)

Ooooooo

Jonathan Cowie Review: Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds

Crime Fiction Awards From the Last of 2025

Sunday 11/01/2026

True Crime Fiction

I am rapidly concluding that the B5 books are CURSED

youtube recs