hamsterwoman: (dabbler)
Some fannish catching up!

1) [community profile] fandomtrees still has 3 trees below the minimum number of 2 gifts, and is thus at risk of delaying reveals again (currently scheduled for Jan 17 reveals), with the decision on delaying to be made the morning of 1/17. Needy trees are mastershield's Tree (f:astro boy, f:balan wonderland, f:kingdom hearts); kalloway's Tree (f:brave nine, f:crossovers, f:fire emblem, f:granblue fantasy, f:gundam, f:kingdom of heroes, f:super robot heroes) whoremoantreatments' Tree (f:advance wars, f:bleach, f:hypnosis mic, f:kuroko no basket, f:pokemon, f:tales of berseria, f:the world ends with you). (List kept updated here.) All of these are open to fic, and the minimum fill for fic is only 100 words, if anyone knows these fandoms and can help out.

(My tree has above the minimum number of gifts but is here, and I’m eager to see what’s on it :)

2) I should’ve mentioned this earlier, but it’s been a crazy couple of weeks. [personal profile] lunasariel is hosting a sync read of To Shape a Dragon’s Breath in her DW here. Currently it’s her, me, and [personal profile] cyanmnemosyne reading along, but contrary to the name, we don’t actually have to be all synched up to participate, so if (like me) you’ve been meaning to read this book for a while, or if you’ve read it already and want to follow our impressions as we make progress through it, come join! I am currently just past halfway, [personal profile] lunasariel is 10-20 chapters ahead of me, and Cyan has just recently started. (And yes, my thoughts on this book are ~50% on the chemistry. Actual Periodic Table of Elements chemistry, I mean, not chemistry between characters, although I’m enjoying that too.)

3) Snowflake catch up!

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.


The problem with doing Snowflake every year for the last, uh… 10 years, I guess? – is that for repeated questions like this, which are about ME as opposed to about my fandoms or projects or objects, which can accumulate it is much harder to come up with something new to say! Both of these questions fall under that category, and so were more challenging than most for me to answer. But let’s see if I can come up with something without repeating myself.

Challenge #7: LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

I do want to stick to fandom-related things I like about myself for this one, so, hm. Last time I answered this question seems to be in 2017 (and my things were “good fannish role model for my children”, “thorough and detailed in talking about what I’m reading/watching”, and “conscientious beta”) and the first time in 2016 (my answers were “good fannish baba/matchmaker”, "committed to fannish crack”, and “conscientious about fandom participation”) – and I do still feel those things are all applicable to me and I still like them. But I’ve done a bunch of new things in the last 9 years, from attending conventions to paying attention to the Hugos to signing up for Yuletide, so let me focus on those new things and see if I can extract three new things I like about myself fannishly from them.

things I like about myself viz conventions, fanfic, and Hugos )

Challenge #8: Talk about your creative process.

This is another one I’ve done before, in 2019 and in 2015, but looking at even the 2019 one, I talked about fannish poetry and graphics, but not about fannish prose/fanfic. So clearly that’s what I should talk about, but what IS my process?

Fanfic process )

(no subject)

Jan. 16th, 2026 12:16 pm[personal profile] greghousesgf
greghousesgf: (pic#17098439)
I saw a movie last night I hadn't seen since it first came out 12 years ago, Kumiko the Treasure Hunter. What a great movie!!

Japanese marching band

Jan. 16th, 2026 02:42 pm[personal profile] neonvincent
neonvincent: For posts about cats and activities involving uniforms. (Krosp)
rachelmanija: (Books: old)


In this engrossing historical novel, three storylines converge on a single target, a female Nazi nicknamed the Huntress. During the war, we follow Nina, one of the Soviet women who flew bomber runs and were known as the Night Witches. After the war, we follow Ian, a British war correspondent turned Nazi hunter, who has teamed up with Nina to hunt down the Huntress as Nina is one of the very few people who saw her face and survived. At the same time, in Boston, we follow Jordan, a young woman who wants to be a photographer and is suspicious of the beautiful German immigrant her father wants to marry...

In The Huntress, we often know what has happened or surely must happen, but not why or how; we know Nina somehow ended up facing off with the Huntress, but not how she got there or how she escaped; we know who Jordan's stepmom-to-be is and that she'll surely be unmasked eventually, but not how or when that'll happen or how the confrontation will go down. There's a lot of suspense but none of it depends on shocking twists, though there are some unexpected turns.

Nina and Jordan are very likable and compelling, especially Nina who is kind of a force of nature. It took me a while to warm up to Ian, but I did about halfway through. Nina's story is fascinating and I could have read a whole novel just about her and her all-female regiment, but I never minded switching back to Jordan as while her life is more ordinary, it's got this tense undercurrent of creeping horror as she and everyone around her are being gaslit and manipulated by a Nazi.

This is the kind of satisfying, engrossing historical novel that I think used to be more common, though this one probably has a lot more queerness than it would have had if it had been written in the 80s - a woman/woman relationship is central to the story, and there are multiple other queer characters. It has some nice funny moments and dialogue to leaven a generally serious story (Nina in particular can be hilarious), and there's some excellent set piece action scenes. If my description sounds good to you, you'll almost certainly enjoy it.

Spoilers! Read more... )

Quinn has written multiple historical novels, mostly set during or around WW2. This is the first I've read but it made me want to read more of hers.

Content notes: Wartime-typical violence, gaslighting, a child in danger. The Huntress murdered six children, but this scene does not appear on-page. There is no sexual assault and no scenes in concentration camps.

Snowflake Challenge #6

Jan. 16th, 2026 01:04 pm[personal profile] elyusion
elyusion: (snowflake challenge)
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 #6: Top 10 Challenge


I finally finished going through my reading page, which means I can continue this without guilty B) Now presenting, without further ado:

Top 10 Photographed Fashion Game Fits
To qualify:
1. It must be an outfit I put on my player character, not something coordinated for an NPC or another player.
2. It must be from a pre-existing screenshot. I cannot open the game, make new outfits, and take new pictures. Or else I would play all day and never have the time to make this post.

All fits are from Style Savvy: Styling Star (worse graphics), Fashion Dreamer (better graphics), and Animal Crossing: New Horizons (chibi/toy-like graphics). No Splatoon fits because I lost them all during The Purge. So it goes.

Let's go. )
dolorosa_12: (fountain pens)
I am absolutely flattened by work this week, and next week promises to be more of the same. It's the point in the academic year when all the Master's and PhD students have to hand in literature reviews and project proposals, and all of them suddenly panic and realise that the classes I taught them (carefully timetabled to coincide with the point at which they were meant to start work on their literature reviews and project proposals) actually contained crucial, useful information and they probably should have been paying more attention and doing the suggested follow-up activities while what I taught them was fresh in their minds. Because they haven't done this, they all, of course, contact me at once, now. It's good to be needed — I wouldn't have a job, otherwise — but I wish they didn't all need me so much and all at the same time.

Anyway, let's use another [community profile] snowflake_challenge prompt for the Friday open thread: Talk about your creative process.

I know a lot of you have already answered this in your own journals, so feel free to link to your posts in the comments rather than writing things out again. Or, answer in the comments if this is a brand new topic for you!

My answer )

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.


What about you?
thewayne: (Default)
Sigh.

So in addition to memory, solid-state drives, high-end video cards, now they're eating up hard drives. Some drives up up 60% in THE LAST FOUR MONTHS, according to a report from a German news source.

From the article: "The trend is also visible in the U.S. A Seagate IronWolf drive with just 4TB capacity would have set you back $70 in early 2023; that drive is now $99. Similarly, the 8TB model is $199, when it would have been priced as low as $130 a couple of years ago. Western Digital's Red Plus alternative is now $175 for 8TB. The toughest blow of all? Seagate's iconic BarraCuda 24TB drive, which we've seen cost as little as $239 during sales events, now costs a whopping $499 on Amazon, and you'll be buying it from a third party. Newegg doesn't even have it in stock."

Apparently there is a knock-on effect of people now building PCs with DDR4 memory instead of the latest DDR5 because all of that memory is being gobbled up by AI. So now older motherboards are in higher demands? AI server boards are specialized beasts and aren't the same thing that you're going to put in your gaming rig.

Apparently the hard disk drives are used to store the bulk data for training AI models, then all the operations are carried out on SSD arrays for speed. Makes sense, from a computer operations standpoint.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/hard-drive-prices-have-surged-by-an-average-of-46-percent-since-september-iconic-24tb-seagate-barracuda-now-usd500-as-ai-claims-another-victim

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/01/16/1332213/hard-drive-prices-have-surged-by-an-average-of-46-since-september
thewayne: (Default)
This is one specific manufacturer, WHIIL. Researchers found that the Bluetooth channel, used normally for configuring the wheelchair upon delivery and for service, was completely unsecure. No authentication, no certificates, no nothing.

The researchers were able to take complete control of the wheelchair, making it run at top speed (5 MPH) and sent it careening down stairs.

One comment on Bruce Schneier's blog commented about OpenBSD, a Unix fork that prides itself on being very secure. They do not support Bluetooth at all. When asked about it, they said that the Bluetooth stack cannot be secured. I'm surprised that something like a wheelchair interface isn't secured with just a panel and a USB cable. Simple controlled physical access. The scariest part is that they can now do Bluetooth well over half a mile, both send and receive - so theoretically hacks like this and transactions can be phished and the baddies are no where near you.

https://www.securityweek.com/researchers-expose-whill-wheelchair-safety-risks-via-remote-hacking/

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/01/hacking-wheelchairs-over-bluetooth.html
bedes: An icon of Marina from the official Hana vs Dango Splatfest art (marina)

Decorative divider


Gonna try to make a tradition of re-promoting myself yearly in January!

Name(s): Azure or Bede. I answer to both, so use whichever floats your boat!
Age group: Either elder gen Z or zillennial, depending on what website you consult. Regardless, I'm an adult!
Country: USA
Subscription/Access Policy: My journal is public, and I don't make locked posts! I'm squicked out by Harry Potter (I'm trans; I hope you can understand!) and Hazbin Hotel, and I have pedophilia/incest/rape as triggers. So, if you post about these things, or they feature heavily on your journal in some way, I'm gonna have to ask you to not add me. No hard feelings!
Other Info: I'm autistic and otherwise disabled, so please be patient with me! I'm from the South of the USA, so I use petnames very casually ("honey, darling, dear," etc). You can also (or alternatively) add my account for my fanfic and fandom meta exclusively, [personal profile] fairyfic.

Main Fandoms: Pokemon, Cookie Run: Kingdom, Great God Grove, In Stars and Time, Kingdom Hearts
Other Fandoms: MILGRAM, Delicious in Dungeon, Splatoon, Undertale, Deltarune, Vocaloid/vocal synths, furry. I'm at least passively interested in most Nintendo franchises. Primarily in gaming fandom!
Fannish Interests: Drawing fanart, and writing fic and meta essays. I make webshrines dedicated to my fandoms. I love analyzing and writing about the queer-coding/queerness and mental health of characters. I'm a shameless wearer of favorite-character-goggles, and I'm a huge shipper. You can see more info about my fannish interests and activities here!
OTPs and Ships: A lot. At the moment, I'm mainly focusing on Sora/Riku (Kingdom Hearts), Shadow Milk Cookie/Pure Vanilla Cookie (Cookie Run), and Thespius/Click Clack (Great God Grove)!
Non-Fannish Interests: Disability, queerness, the indie web, alterhumanity, rabbits, internet culture, and archival
 

A blinkie that says, 'I was uncool before uncool was cool' A blinkie that says, 'Fairy type Trainer', with a Fairy-type symbol next to it A blinkie that says, 'It's gay love, baby!', with hearts on either side

rydra_wong: Lee Miller photo showing two women wearing metal fire masks in England during WWII. (Default)
This collection of links to local mutual aid funds, food banks, and other organizations doing work on the ground:

https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

Goodbye Horses, done

Jan. 16th, 2026 07:31 am[personal profile] moonhare
moonhare: (Default)
I finished the documentary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye_Horses:_The_Many_Lives_of_Q_Lazzarus Tuesday night; I found it darker and more melancholy than expected. To clear my thoughts I watched Zootopia Wednesday. Much better!

My paper chasing has been productive: I have three boxes going now. This has also led me to visit the websites of the companies who hold, or had held, my investments. I’ve printed off various statements to add to my files so that I have information handy without searching for logins and passwords.

A next step will be to contact my money advisor whom I haven’t spoken with since before retirement and get some insight into an annuity that was set up by one of the library’s other ‘revolving-door’ plan custodians. This thing looks like it was a poor investment.

During my idle time I’ve been lurking on Reddit. I never gave the site much thought until I kept seeing it in many online search results. I’ve found some great hints for canning, and for snowblower and generator maintenance. I also like their plushie forum with so many folks talking about their rescues. This isn’t to be confused with their NSFW plushophile section. *brrrrrrr* not for me.

More of the same:

img_1_1768425203963_Original.jpeg

img_1_1768417341848_Original.jpeg

IMG_1382.webp
cimorene: Two women in 1920s hair at a crowded party laughing in delight (:D)
J. Mortimer Fotherby-Wentworth, M.D.
Messrs Bumpus (a business consisting of multiple Bumpuses)
Wilfred Leatherhead
Rupert Brangstrode
Abel Garstone
Mr. Blott
Mr. Clotworthy
Dr. Runciman Jellicoe
Markham Crewe

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frenzy: (Default)
frenzy

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