- 1. The Agile Manifesto is 25 years old!
- (tags:software development history )
- 2. Trump failed to indict six members of Congress. This is why it matters (and why juries are important)
- (tags:usa law )
- 3. Putin's megaphone: Orbán's far-right push into UK universities is fuelled by Russian oil
- (tags:Hungary Russia bigotry uk )
- 4. Scottish government bans wet wipes containing plastic
- (tags:scotland plastic pollution babies )
+ So.
Night one of trying to go straight to bed: slice my finger open on my razor in the cabinet as I reach for my toothbrush. Spend 25 minutes applying tissue paper waiting for the bleeding to stop before sullenly getting dressed and going to find a bandaid.
Night two, as I'm clearing supper away, a cheerful announcement in the mess hall: we have an extra GB of Internet each! ...That we have to use before midnight and it rolls over to the next week. Well. I can't let that go to waste but hey, I just bought a bunch of comics, they'll eat that GB for breakfast.
iPad: What is this wifi you speak of? Haven't heard of it, I'm not connecting to that.
Me: *beleaguered sigh* I can't not use it. *goes on YouTube and stays up way too late*
+ Anyways. I comfort bought a bunch of comics? Because the pre-order code for the Mitski tickets did in fact not arrive and so no concert for me *sullenly kicks rocks*. It looks like I could have paired it with the Gentleman Jack ballet, and I think the Marie Antoinette exhibit is still on at the VA? Was starting to slowly form a plan and now it ain't happening.
Comics though!
- pre-ordered vol2 of Absolute Wonder Woman, it was 50% off and that seems so silly to me.
- Vol 5 & 6 of Poison Ivy. The joy of realizing I was that far behind :DDD I'm two thirds through vol5 and it may be my favorite?
- Voyager: Way Home 5 issue mini concluded, I picked those up. omnomnom more Janeway.
- Nice House by the Sea vol1 for my creepy lil alien guy making poor decisions about his blorbos.
- Daredevil & Echo mini bc sale and pretty art.
- Defenders: Beyond bc it looked like silly fun (I should re-read Saladin's Exiles tbh)
+ Things I'd like to do when I'm home:
Post that Top 10 prematurely cancelled series list I wanted to do for Snowflake.
Festivids recs.
Get![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
intw_amc rolling.
Last masterpost from forsquares.
Play Dune Awakening, they've made it much easier to jump back in thank fuck.
Maybe the ABC of comics I saw on BlueSky that looked fun.
Open laptop. Make shiny squares. Possibly shiny vid.
Work on my layout.
Update scrapbook.
+ it's just TWO MORE DAYS you can do it Self! Let's go lesbians etcetera.
Night one of trying to go straight to bed: slice my finger open on my razor in the cabinet as I reach for my toothbrush. Spend 25 minutes applying tissue paper waiting for the bleeding to stop before sullenly getting dressed and going to find a bandaid.
Night two, as I'm clearing supper away, a cheerful announcement in the mess hall: we have an extra GB of Internet each! ...That we have to use before midnight and it rolls over to the next week. Well. I can't let that go to waste but hey, I just bought a bunch of comics, they'll eat that GB for breakfast.
iPad: What is this wifi you speak of? Haven't heard of it, I'm not connecting to that.
Me: *beleaguered sigh* I can't not use it. *goes on YouTube and stays up way too late*
+ Anyways. I comfort bought a bunch of comics? Because the pre-order code for the Mitski tickets did in fact not arrive and so no concert for me *sullenly kicks rocks*. It looks like I could have paired it with the Gentleman Jack ballet, and I think the Marie Antoinette exhibit is still on at the VA? Was starting to slowly form a plan and now it ain't happening.
Comics though!
- pre-ordered vol2 of Absolute Wonder Woman, it was 50% off and that seems so silly to me.
- Vol 5 & 6 of Poison Ivy. The joy of realizing I was that far behind :DDD I'm two thirds through vol5 and it may be my favorite?
- Voyager: Way Home 5 issue mini concluded, I picked those up. omnomnom more Janeway.
- Nice House by the Sea vol1 for my creepy lil alien guy making poor decisions about his blorbos.
- Daredevil & Echo mini bc sale and pretty art.
- Defenders: Beyond bc it looked like silly fun (I should re-read Saladin's Exiles tbh)
+ Things I'd like to do when I'm home:
Post that Top 10 prematurely cancelled series list I wanted to do for Snowflake.
Festivids recs.
Get
intw_amc rolling. Last masterpost from forsquares.
Play Dune Awakening, they've made it much easier to jump back in thank fuck.
Maybe the ABC of comics I saw on BlueSky that looked fun.
Open laptop. Make shiny squares. Possibly shiny vid.
Work on my layout.
Update scrapbook.
+ it's just TWO MORE DAYS you can do it Self! Let's go lesbians etcetera.
Tags:
Read The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater, better known for writing YA fantasy (my best beloved, the Raven Cycle, among others); her first novel for adults, this is fantasy-tinged historical fiction, set in the early days of the U.S.'s involvement in WWII, at a luxury hotel in West Virginia— famous for its "sweetwater" springs, believed to have healing/magical properties— which has been requisitioned by the government for the white-gloved detention of Axis diplomats and their families. I am... not entirely sure how I feel about this book? I enjoyed it, in a no brain cells, just vibes kind of way, but I did actually have a few brain cells on the clock and so there are some narrative choices I'm still chewing over, not entirely sure about the taste. It reminded me of Amor Towles' A Gentlemen in Moscow, for the obvious similarity of "life in a luxury hotel during a historical turning point" and in the way it wears its historical setting lightly, more interested in developing its (admittedly interesting) characters: the hotel's capable general manager, local-girl-made-good June Hudson; the FBI agent in charge of a surveillance operation at the hotel, who has tried to distance himself from his own West Virginia roots; the nonverbal, autistic daughter of a Nazi attaché (...yeah). I had, in A Gentlemen in Moscow, been struck by a sense of something near-supernatural in the protagonist's luck; in this one, the magic is real, as is the magic ex machina of the ending. ( ... ) On the other hand, this reminded me less of Kate Atkinson's Transcription than I'd expected, although having skimmed the Wikipedia page for Transcription, it turns out that I remembered way less of that novel than I thought I did, so possibly a moot point. (My point is that I feel like there was less espionage than advertised.)
Tags:
Thursday is here with recs for you!
This Thursday, I'm recommending everyone do a quick brush-up on the recent community rules update, especially since I'm adding a teensy bit more today: Dreamwidth Admin privileges do not allow me to edit post content, only to add or remove tags, change age restriction settings, or delete entries entirely. So starting now, if I notice that your entry has needs a cut, I'll do my very best to get ahold of you ASAP to fix things, but if you don't respond or find a way to contact me in 48 hours, even to say "I'm sorry, I don't have proper computer access at the moment!", I'll have to delete the entry. This is not something I want to do; I'd much rather just change the access level to Private (where presumably only the poster and the community admin can see it), but that doesn't seem to be an option at the moment. I plan to ask about that when I get a moment, but in the mean time, those are the options.
Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this, or any of the new rules! I'm open to input on anything community members think needs adjusting.
On a lighter note: Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!
Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!
This Thursday, I'm recommending everyone do a quick brush-up on the recent community rules update, especially since I'm adding a teensy bit more today: Dreamwidth Admin privileges do not allow me to edit post content, only to add or remove tags, change age restriction settings, or delete entries entirely. So starting now, if I notice that your entry has needs a cut, I'll do my very best to get ahold of you ASAP to fix things, but if you don't respond or find a way to contact me in 48 hours, even to say "I'm sorry, I don't have proper computer access at the moment!", I'll have to delete the entry. This is not something I want to do; I'd much rather just change the access level to Private (where presumably only the poster and the community admin can see it), but that doesn't seem to be an option at the moment. I plan to ask about that when I get a moment, but in the mean time, those are the options.
Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this, or any of the new rules! I'm open to input on anything community members think needs adjusting.
On a lighter note: Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!
Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!
The recycle got picked up. At 5:30 of course, but at least it was same day. And because it's seven weeks post-solstice it was still light out so I could see the guys had left my bin lying on its side, blocking the sidewalk. So I went out and rescued it and dragged it back up the path, and a nice guy walking his dog asked if I needed a hand. I thanked him and said I was OK, but if he hadn't had a curious energetic pup to handle I might have taken him up on his offer, and let him heave the thing back onto the snowbank.
I miss the city guys who always pushed the bins back to the edge of the yard.
However it seems-- fingers crossed-- that my bar fridge has come back to life. I treat it very gently just in case, but not having to tackle the stairs pre-meds is a great relief.
And Monday is a holiday, so I must get a shop in before then.
I miss the city guys who always pushed the bins back to the edge of the yard.
However it seems-- fingers crossed-- that my bar fridge has come back to life. I treat it very gently just in case, but not having to tackle the stairs pre-meds is a great relief.
And Monday is a holiday, so I must get a shop in before then.
Tags:
⌈ Secret Post #6978 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 06 secrets from Secret Submission Post #996.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
"Hate brings views": Confessions of a London fake news TikToker:
London is being used as the backdrop for inaccurate viral videos that reach enormous audiences around the world by playing into the worst stereotypes about the capital.
This was an investigation into one man who was doing this thing:
Last summer, the man says, he found himself sitting in his car, analysing trends on TikTok. His day job was conducting viewings for an estate agency but he was trying to come up with an idea for a viral video account that could be run as a money-making side-hustle.
“I was thinking of unique videos I can do for people,” he says on the tape.
That’s when he had a brainwave: “Hate brings views.”
At that time protests outside asylum hotels were spreading across the country. The man says he noticed “far-right people” were among the most engaged on TikTok. They were easy to rile up: “They hate such videos of illegal migrants. I was like, why not?”
....
The TikToker appears to have no concept of the potential real-world impact of his uploads, instead considering everything in terms of view counts and pieces of content.
So he made fake videos about immigrants being housed in prime properties, to which he had access through his job.
He had originally found he could make money through posting videos on TikTok but 'TikTok immediately deleted his account because he was just stealing other people’s videos and reposting them'.
There seems to be just a total disconnect going on in the guy's mind (or he's just ethically vacuous) and generally he does not appear the sharpest blade in the drawer:
Despite fostering online hatred, the man recorded.... insists he doesn’t personally share the views expressed on his TikTok account. Instead, he suggests his fake anti-migrant house tour videos were just a way to game the algorithm, build an audience, and hopefully make money.
He's also
baffled. He can’t understand how London Centric traced his anonymous hate-filled London TikTok account back to his employer by geolocating the wheelie bins in his videos.
“I thought no one’s gonna notice that,” he says. “Why would someone?”
As if people aren't doing this sort of thing all the time.
Tags:
1. Who was your first kiss?
2. Who is the last person you kissed?
3. What is the story of your most romantic kiss?
4. What is the story of your worst kiss?
5. Who do you want to kiss right now?
Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.
If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!
2. Who is the last person you kissed?
3. What is the story of your most romantic kiss?
4. What is the story of your worst kiss?
5. Who do you want to kiss right now?
Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.
If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!
TV: finished season 1 of 1670 with Kelly but then got sidetracked before continuing with season 2, the part I actually haven't seen. Have to get back on track!
Finished Amphibia and misted up a bit. That was a good show & I enjoyed it. I liked having a ten years later glimpse ;-;
Finished Hilda and also enjoyed that! They crammed so much backstory into the last few episodes, wow. I would have loved to see more seasons! I liked that they grew. Physically, I mean, but also, yk, in other ways. My biggest complaint at the start of the show was that I couldn't stand David's baby voice, and I don't even know when it changed but now I'm like oh obviously it was intentional :D all season three he is constantly eating something because he's a 13yo boy now, lolol.
I'm midway through Way of the House Husband, which is very lulzy.
Books: I remember reading. Kinda. Sorta. (Trying to come up with a plan to bring back reading in English without feeling like I should be doing something else because there are many books I want to be reading!!)
Games: still playing ACNH, still annoyed it's still snowy >:/
Music: this bad bunny parody about Canadian winters made me lol :P
In other music news, a lot of recs for Mexican emo on reddit today, I am time traveling, here. I don't think I will stick it out but I am enjoying the trip :D
Writing: I wrote?????? LOL. It was fun. A lil idea that's going nowhere, but I enjoyed writing a few hundred words about it. Been a long time!!
Finished Amphibia and misted up a bit. That was a good show & I enjoyed it. I liked having a ten years later glimpse ;-;
Finished Hilda and also enjoyed that! They crammed so much backstory into the last few episodes, wow. I would have loved to see more seasons! I liked that they grew. Physically, I mean, but also, yk, in other ways. My biggest complaint at the start of the show was that I couldn't stand David's baby voice, and I don't even know when it changed but now I'm like oh obviously it was intentional :D all season three he is constantly eating something because he's a 13yo boy now, lolol.
I'm midway through Way of the House Husband, which is very lulzy.
Books: I remember reading. Kinda. Sorta. (Trying to come up with a plan to bring back reading in English without feeling like I should be doing something else because there are many books I want to be reading!!)
Games: still playing ACNH, still annoyed it's still snowy >:/
Music: this bad bunny parody about Canadian winters made me lol :P
In other music news, a lot of recs for Mexican emo on reddit today, I am time traveling, here. I don't think I will stick it out but I am enjoying the trip :D
Writing: I wrote?????? LOL. It was fun. A lil idea that's going nowhere, but I enjoyed writing a few hundred words about it. Been a long time!!
Tags:
In the 32nd century, Captain Lorq Von Ray assembles a ragtag crew for a dangerous—some would say crazy—mission to harvest the superheavy element illyrion from a dying star. If they succeed, it would threaten tech megacorp Red-Shift's economic stranglehold on interstellar travel, inaugurating a new era of opportunity for struggling outer colonies. But Captain Von Ray's motives aren't just political, they're also personal, as flashbacks reveal his long history with the psychologically twisted brother-and-sister heirs to the Red-Shift fortune.
I really enjoyed this. The space opera plot is an effective backdrop for some nicely nuanced character work and social commentary. Money and class are still driving forces in this future, and people are shaped by that as much as they are by advancing technology and the cultural changes that have come with it. Besides the Captain and the Reds, the other focal characters are two crew members from Earth, one an emotionally guarded Romani kid who's gone against his people's prohibition on cybernetic implants to access job opportunities in space, and the other a socially awkward Harvard grad who has tens of thousands of notes for a novel (an ancient, dead art form) but hasn't yet written a single page. I love the development of their tentative friendship; it feels very honest about how hard it is to relate across cultural divides, and also very affectionate towards both characters. It's like the author is rooting for them even though he can't truthfully make it easy.
The worldbuilding really worked for me. There are enough surprising details and curious asides to make the galaxy feel lived-in and realistically messy, but not so many that it feels scattered. Delany has a very visual prose style and can convey exactly what he sees in his mind's eye, whether it's the unfurling sail of a glittering space yacht or the uneasy twitch of a character's cheek, and that adds to the vivid atmosphere.
I also appreciated the subtle exploration of disability in the context of a society where many things can be medically "fixed" that can't be in our own world. The author knows that this in itself would not "fix" people's attitudes about their own embodiment and others', and that elimination of bodily differences is not a utopian impulse. Characters are allowed to have complex feelings about their physical abilities—the ones they're born with, the ones they've lost, and the ones they've gained through technology—and aren't required to fully explain themselves just because other people want to know.
Criticisms? I think the book has too many characters; some of the less foregrounded crew members don't get much attention and it might have been better to drop a couple so we could spend more time with the rest. The role of female characters is particularly limited, and when they do appear, sometimes their boobs are mentioned for no reason. (I am of course aware that Delany is gay. Perhaps he was subconsciously influenced by what he was reading from other writers at the time.) Other than that, this was a good read.
Content note: A character's pet is harmed, but recovers.
I really enjoyed this. The space opera plot is an effective backdrop for some nicely nuanced character work and social commentary. Money and class are still driving forces in this future, and people are shaped by that as much as they are by advancing technology and the cultural changes that have come with it. Besides the Captain and the Reds, the other focal characters are two crew members from Earth, one an emotionally guarded Romani kid who's gone against his people's prohibition on cybernetic implants to access job opportunities in space, and the other a socially awkward Harvard grad who has tens of thousands of notes for a novel (an ancient, dead art form) but hasn't yet written a single page. I love the development of their tentative friendship; it feels very honest about how hard it is to relate across cultural divides, and also very affectionate towards both characters. It's like the author is rooting for them even though he can't truthfully make it easy.
The worldbuilding really worked for me. There are enough surprising details and curious asides to make the galaxy feel lived-in and realistically messy, but not so many that it feels scattered. Delany has a very visual prose style and can convey exactly what he sees in his mind's eye, whether it's the unfurling sail of a glittering space yacht or the uneasy twitch of a character's cheek, and that adds to the vivid atmosphere.
I also appreciated the subtle exploration of disability in the context of a society where many things can be medically "fixed" that can't be in our own world. The author knows that this in itself would not "fix" people's attitudes about their own embodiment and others', and that elimination of bodily differences is not a utopian impulse. Characters are allowed to have complex feelings about their physical abilities—the ones they're born with, the ones they've lost, and the ones they've gained through technology—and aren't required to fully explain themselves just because other people want to know.
Criticisms? I think the book has too many characters; some of the less foregrounded crew members don't get much attention and it might have been better to drop a couple so we could spend more time with the rest. The role of female characters is particularly limited, and when they do appear, sometimes their boobs are mentioned for no reason. (I am of course aware that Delany is gay. Perhaps he was subconsciously influenced by what he was reading from other writers at the time.) Other than that, this was a good read.
Content note: A character's pet is harmed, but recovers.
(![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mecurtin Feb. 12th, 2026 09:29 am)
mecurtin Feb. 12th, 2026 09:29 am)If it seems as though Trump plans to steal the midterm elections, you’re right. If it seems as though there’s no way to stop him, you’re wrong. Indivisible’s strategy for the whole year is built around the midterm elections:
- making sure the Democrats who are elected are actually going to fight fascism instead of going along with it.
- making sure that the November election is free & fair, that we win, and *that the results are enforced*.
The critical, unprecedented period will be between Election Day and January 3, 2027, when the new Congress is seated. Indivisible National and other parts of the anti-MAGA movement have been taking advice from scholars of authoritarianism like Erica Chenowith. They say that one of the most dangerous times for a democracy under threat is right around or after an election that the authoritarians are losing. That’s the point where mass mobilization, *society-wide mobilization*, may be critical.
Chenowith and their colleagues have found that authoritarian governments will fall when when 3.5% of the population is committed to active, nonviolent resistance. For the U.S., that means we need at least 10 million people ready to make sure that when they try Jan 6 2.0 (and they *will*) it stops, flails, and falls over.
To get to that point we have to BUILD to that point.
We KNOW the Trump Regime, the corrupt SCOTUS, and state & local level MAGA will be attacking our right & ability to vote in every way they can. We’ve mostly done what we can already with gerrymandering and counter-gerrymandering, from now on it’s going to be what Leah Greenberg calls legal whack-a-mole, where we all have to be alert to attacks on the right to vote and hit them wherever they come up.
Our tentpole events will be a series of #NoKings rallies, growing in size.
• #HandsOff in April ‘25 was 3 million people.
• #NoKings, June ‘25 was 5 million.
• #NoKings2, October ‘25 was 7M.
• #NoKings3 will be March 28, we want 9M people.
• #NoKings4 in the summer, 11M
• #NoKings5 in the fall, leading up to the election, 13 million people.
Each #NoKings event is made up of thousands of local ones, they don’t involved a big march to the seat of power. All US politics starts at the state and local level, organizing starts local, community is local. And importantly, elections are administered locally. NoKings will be a way for people to become aware and connect with others in their area to monitor polling places, and to let state & local officials know that they can’t do anything in the dark.
These growing numbers are how we build to a number of people committed to oppose the regime that’s so large that even when they try to steal the election, which they will, even when they don’t want to certify the results, which they won’t, they won’t be able to stop us. Even though we won’t be fighting them with guns.
TLDR: both the doomers & the institutionalists are WRONG. Trump doesn’t have the power to just “cancel the elections”, but existing institutions aren’t enough to ensure that we have meaningful elections and that the results are honored.
We the people, organizing and working together, are what’s going to stop him. Bad news for both doomers & institutionalists: there’s work for *you* to do. Join a local organization, Indivisible, immigrants’ rights, 50501, or the Democratic, Democratic Socialist, or Working Peoples Parties. Get to know more of the people in your neighborhood and congressional district. Become part of a team.
Here’s the motto Leah Greenberg says we should put on our walls and phone lock screens, to keep our eyes on the prize:
They are losing, so they're going to try to steal the election.
They're gonna fail, because we're gonna stop them.
this is something of a first draft. I'd like advice about how to make it punchier, more like something that would draw eyeballs on substack etc. Where do I need links? Is it structured properly, with the right things at the top?
Where should I put something about how I fit into Indivisible? I'm just a joe-normal member of a joe-normal Indivisible group, this is really reporting based on attending the weekly "What's the Plan meetings for the past year.
- making sure the Democrats who are elected are actually going to fight fascism instead of going along with it.
- making sure that the November election is free & fair, that we win, and *that the results are enforced*.
The critical, unprecedented period will be between Election Day and January 3, 2027, when the new Congress is seated. Indivisible National and other parts of the anti-MAGA movement have been taking advice from scholars of authoritarianism like Erica Chenowith. They say that one of the most dangerous times for a democracy under threat is right around or after an election that the authoritarians are losing. That’s the point where mass mobilization, *society-wide mobilization*, may be critical.
Chenowith and their colleagues have found that authoritarian governments will fall when when 3.5% of the population is committed to active, nonviolent resistance. For the U.S., that means we need at least 10 million people ready to make sure that when they try Jan 6 2.0 (and they *will*) it stops, flails, and falls over.
To get to that point we have to BUILD to that point.
We KNOW the Trump Regime, the corrupt SCOTUS, and state & local level MAGA will be attacking our right & ability to vote in every way they can. We’ve mostly done what we can already with gerrymandering and counter-gerrymandering, from now on it’s going to be what Leah Greenberg calls legal whack-a-mole, where we all have to be alert to attacks on the right to vote and hit them wherever they come up.
Our tentpole events will be a series of #NoKings rallies, growing in size.
• #HandsOff in April ‘25 was 3 million people.
• #NoKings, June ‘25 was 5 million.
• #NoKings2, October ‘25 was 7M.
• #NoKings3 will be March 28, we want 9M people.
• #NoKings4 in the summer, 11M
• #NoKings5 in the fall, leading up to the election, 13 million people.
Each #NoKings event is made up of thousands of local ones, they don’t involved a big march to the seat of power. All US politics starts at the state and local level, organizing starts local, community is local. And importantly, elections are administered locally. NoKings will be a way for people to become aware and connect with others in their area to monitor polling places, and to let state & local officials know that they can’t do anything in the dark.
These growing numbers are how we build to a number of people committed to oppose the regime that’s so large that even when they try to steal the election, which they will, even when they don’t want to certify the results, which they won’t, they won’t be able to stop us. Even though we won’t be fighting them with guns.
TLDR: both the doomers & the institutionalists are WRONG. Trump doesn’t have the power to just “cancel the elections”, but existing institutions aren’t enough to ensure that we have meaningful elections and that the results are honored.
We the people, organizing and working together, are what’s going to stop him. Bad news for both doomers & institutionalists: there’s work for *you* to do. Join a local organization, Indivisible, immigrants’ rights, 50501, or the Democratic, Democratic Socialist, or Working Peoples Parties. Get to know more of the people in your neighborhood and congressional district. Become part of a team.
Here’s the motto Leah Greenberg says we should put on our walls and phone lock screens, to keep our eyes on the prize:
They are losing, so they're going to try to steal the election.
They're gonna fail, because we're gonna stop them.
this is something of a first draft. I'd like advice about how to make it punchier, more like something that would draw eyeballs on substack etc. Where do I need links? Is it structured properly, with the right things at the top?
Where should I put something about how I fit into Indivisible? I'm just a joe-normal member of a joe-normal Indivisible group, this is really reporting based on attending the weekly "What's the Plan meetings for the past year.
(james_davis_nicoll Feb. 12th, 2026 08:37 am)
james_davis_nicoll Feb. 12th, 2026 08:37 am)
A sample issue of New Edge Sword & Sorcery, whose 2026 funding drive goes live today.
New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine: Volume I, Number 3, edited by Oliver Brackenbury
Tags:
- 1. Abigail Nussbaum is doing a reread of The Lord Of The Rings
- (tags:reading lotr )
- 2. Beavers Built a $1.2M Dam for Free — And Saved a Czech River
- (tags:Czechoslovakia beavers rivers )
- 3. Slow Tuesday Night - a short story about living life on ridiculous fast forward
- (tags:scifi short_story society )
- 4. The real Tavistock Clinic scandal: 1,000 court cases that never materialised
- (tags:LGBT transgender law UK misinformation healthcare )
Tags:
- beavers,
- czechoslovakia,
- healthcare,
- law,
- lgbt,
- links,
- lotr,
- misinformation,
- reading,
- rivers,
- scifi,
- short_story,
- society,
- transgender,
- uk
Still haven't seen Heated Rivalry but I glanced at one of the books in a bookstore last night, and realised that I had the characters backwards! Based on pictures, I'd assumed that the dark-haired one was Ilya Rozanov and the ginger one was Shane Hollander. I'd figured that Rozanov was part Kazakh (or could well have been part Korean, like Viktor Tsoi) – but the guy who actually turns out to be playing Rozanov doesn't look Slavic to me at all. I can only see him as having a severe case of American Canadian Actor Face. This has been an interesting collision of racial assumptions.
(ride_4ever Feb. 12th, 2026 12:33 am)
ride_4ever Feb. 12th, 2026 12:33 am)Firewhiskey Fic will be running its Valentine Edition inebriated fanworks-a-thon this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Prompts are now posted in the comm. You can see the prompts and details about this no-signup, no-stress, no-sobriety event at the Firewhiskey Fic comm on DW.
So the world is a shitshow. No surprise there.
Otherwise-- otherwise, I got my recycling into the bin and the bin out of its snowbank and was surprised that six weeks of recycle still didn't fill the thing up. But of course there's another bag of recycling sitting in the bunker. If pickup is as late as I expect it to be, I might try stuffing that in as well. And maybe ask SND if I can put a bag of organics in her green bin because mine is still stuck in two feet of snow. But no, actually: the green bin pickup comes early when I'm still asleep.
Weather pages are all about the cold spell being broken when temps got above freezing today. Yes well, there was a wind so it was 'high of 2C feels like -7' and yes it did, in spite of the lakes of melt at all the street corners. Some public-spirited type on Dupont was hacking at the knee high snow berms pushed up by the plows in order to clear the storm drain. Go public-spirited guy.
Reading is still the Riddlemaster trilogy, now on volume 3, which I've only read once and am still confused about. There's a great deal of travelling from place to place in that one, is partly why. Have dropped Dr. Siri early on in vol 13 because things are getting dark and I expect several long-time characters will be dead either in this one or the final volume.
Otherwise-- otherwise, I got my recycling into the bin and the bin out of its snowbank and was surprised that six weeks of recycle still didn't fill the thing up. But of course there's another bag of recycling sitting in the bunker. If pickup is as late as I expect it to be, I might try stuffing that in as well. And maybe ask SND if I can put a bag of organics in her green bin because mine is still stuck in two feet of snow. But no, actually: the green bin pickup comes early when I'm still asleep.
Weather pages are all about the cold spell being broken when temps got above freezing today. Yes well, there was a wind so it was 'high of 2C feels like -7' and yes it did, in spite of the lakes of melt at all the street corners. Some public-spirited type on Dupont was hacking at the knee high snow berms pushed up by the plows in order to clear the storm drain. Go public-spirited guy.
Reading is still the Riddlemaster trilogy, now on volume 3, which I've only read once and am still confused about. There's a great deal of travelling from place to place in that one, is partly why. Have dropped Dr. Siri early on in vol 13 because things are getting dark and I expect several long-time characters will be dead either in this one or the final volume.
Tags:
Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky. That sure was an Adrian Tchaikovsky novel! It succesfully did what it did but I've read enough Tchaikovsky that I didn't feel like it really stood out.
Chroniques du Pays des Mères, Élisabeth Vonarburg. Still having to resist from reading ahead of book club pace, but also this past week I went and reread/skimmed everything I'd already read to help keep track of all the plot/worldbuilding details. Our protagonist has just left home for the first time and I'm curious to know what comes next.
Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: An Introvert's Year of Living Dangerously, by Jessica Pan. Saw this recommended as a self-help book, and thought I'd try it. It's very readable -- the author is the sort of shy introvert that I can easily relate to, and I appreciated that her writing voice was very confident in discussing her anxiety. This sort of self-help memoir is a bit odd in that she's trying to position herself as an everywoman, but reading between the lines it's clear that she wasn't just working to break out her shell so she could make more friends and overcome anxiety, but also so that she could write a book based on it; which seems like it has advanages both in motivation and in getting access to expert professionals to provide advice.
To Ride a Rising Storm, Moniquill Blackgoose. Sequel to To Shape a Dragon's Breath. At heart these are school stories, and even when they're not at school the focus is still on the characters and relationships, with a lot of social commentary about colonialism in an AU North America, with the political plot and the dragons and alchemy, while present, being less of the focus. I liked the new characters here, in particular the Jewish ones. (This AU, instead of "Jewish", uses a different word with Slavic etymology; I'm aware there's a related word in Russian that's an offensive slur; I wasn't bothered but some people migh be. Anyway AU Judaism does not seem to have any noticeable differences from our world.) This book ended on a rather abrupt cliffhanger, so now I can't wait for the next one.
Chroniques du Pays des Mères, Élisabeth Vonarburg. Still having to resist from reading ahead of book club pace, but also this past week I went and reread/skimmed everything I'd already read to help keep track of all the plot/worldbuilding details. Our protagonist has just left home for the first time and I'm curious to know what comes next.
Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: An Introvert's Year of Living Dangerously, by Jessica Pan. Saw this recommended as a self-help book, and thought I'd try it. It's very readable -- the author is the sort of shy introvert that I can easily relate to, and I appreciated that her writing voice was very confident in discussing her anxiety. This sort of self-help memoir is a bit odd in that she's trying to position herself as an everywoman, but reading between the lines it's clear that she wasn't just working to break out her shell so she could make more friends and overcome anxiety, but also so that she could write a book based on it; which seems like it has advanages both in motivation and in getting access to expert professionals to provide advice.
To Ride a Rising Storm, Moniquill Blackgoose. Sequel to To Shape a Dragon's Breath. At heart these are school stories, and even when they're not at school the focus is still on the characters and relationships, with a lot of social commentary about colonialism in an AU North America, with the political plot and the dragons and alchemy, while present, being less of the focus. I liked the new characters here, in particular the Jewish ones. (This AU, instead of "Jewish", uses a different word with Slavic etymology; I'm aware there's a related word in Russian that's an offensive slur; I wasn't bothered but some people migh be. Anyway AU Judaism does not seem to have any noticeable differences from our world.) This book ended on a rather abrupt cliffhanger, so now I can't wait for the next one.
Tags:
.