skygiants | Reading

Your laser-eye loon art for the day is a faux Antifa Regimental Badge for the Northern Defenders, Loon Liberator Brigade.(warning: this may be AI generated. I never saw an artist attribution.)

It is such a shame that antifa is actually just a bunch of collective action groups because I would sign up for this brigade just for the gear! (Well, and the paycheck if that were real.)

So, yesterday in the Defendre le Nord regiment, I did a bunch of stuff that felt a little bit like nothing, but which is probably 100% mission critical. I have a friend who is acting as a drop-off point for folks who are donating things from out of state and I went over to their house yesterday to help them open packages, sort, and get stuff ready for delivery. Then, we drove together over to their contact's house and unloaded everything for distribution.

As we unloaded the last box, I asked the contact if there was specific immigrant owned/operated restaurant nearby that they knew was struggling and needed a couple of customers. Having gotten that info, we drove over and had lunch.

I should explain to folks from out of town what it is like to go into a Mexican restaurant right now. You don't just walk in. There's someone standing guard inside over a locked door, they unlock it long enough for you to slip in, and then they lock it up tight again. Somewhere on the door is posted a 4th amendment statement that says something to the effect that this business does not give permission for any search and seizure operations, including but not limited to the seizing of persons.

The atmosphere was a bit grim, but the food was amazing and I double-tipped the folks working there because holy shit none of this should be happening. They fucking kidnapped another child, y'all. None of this is right? But, that's fucking cruel beyond measure. (Not that that's news to them. They have no problem roughing up grandfathers either.)

I had hoped to join my singers again last night, but they have a tendency to gather exactly when I am making or eating dinner, so tonight I will have to try again. I just saw on Facebook that my mutual aid group, the Food Communists, are in desperate need for hands, so after I drop Mason off at his haircut (his partner is coming to town tomorrow!) I'm headed over there to help out for a couple of hours.

K. Also have to clean the house ocassionally, so I am off. Yesterday's dinner was knuefle soup, today's lunch: egg salad on an everything bun with cottage cheese! Fueling the revolution one meal at time!

Stay strong!

P.S. Vance is visiting us today, apparently. Wish us luck. They'll probably try to plant some aggitators to get violent.

rachelmanija

A teenage boy, Ambrose, wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there. OS, the AI programmed with his mother's voice, reminds him that he's on a mission to rescue his sister, who went to Titan two years ago and sent out a distress call. And also, he has a surprise companion on a journey he thought would be solo: Kodiak, a teenage boy from the rival nation, who is ensconced in his own quarters and refuses to come out.

Ambrose, who is a typical teenager in lots of ways apart from being a genius and an astronaut, manages to coax Kodiak out and immediately starts thinking lustful thoughts about him. Kodiak, whose country is much more austere and militarized than Ambrose's, very gradually warms up to him.

And then what I thought was going to be a slow-burn gay YA romance in a science fiction setting takes a huge left turn. To be fair, it does still centrally involve a gay YA romance. But the science fiction aspect isn't just there as a cool background. It's actually a YA science fiction novel that has a romance along with a plot that goes in multiple unexpected directions, and is very moving in a way that's only possible because of the science fiction elements.

If you're a stickler for hard science fiction in which everything is definitely possible/likely, this probably has at least one too many "I don't think that's likely to work that way" moments for you. But if you'd like to read a fun and touching science fiction adventure-romance that will probably surprise you at least once, just read the book without knowing anything more.

( Spoilers! )

osprey_archer

I’ve been enjoying Dorothy Lathrop’s books so much that I checked the university catalog to see if they had any other books by her, and discovered that she illustrated a book of poems by Sara Teasdale! Teasdale has been one of my favorites since we read “There Will Come Soft Rains” in high school, so of course I had to give it a go.

I’m working my way through the book slowly, a poem a night. I ought to save this one till next October, but I haven’t the patience, so here it is.

Late October
By Sara Teasdale

I found ten kinds of wild flower growing
On a steely day that looked like snowing:
Queen Anne’s lace, and blue heal-all,
A buttercup, straggling, grown too tall,
A rusty aster, a chicory flower–
Ten I found in half an hour.
The air was blurred with dry leaves flying,
Gold and scarlet, gaily dying.
A squirrel ran off with a nut in his mouth,
And always, always, flying south,
Twittering, the birds went by,
Flickering sharp against the sky,
Some in great bows, some in wedges,
Some in bands with wavering edges;
Flocks and flocks were flying over
With the north wind for their drover.
“Flowers,” I said, “you’d better go,
Surely it’s coming on for snow,”–
They did not heed me, nor head the birds,
Twittering thin, far-fallen words–
The others through of to-morrow, but they
Only remembered yesterday.

settiai

I've made this post a number of times without any luck, but I wanted to try again just in case I have better luck this time. Would anyone be interested in any of the following Nintendo Switch games?

Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! (example on Amazon)
Spyro Reignited Trilogy (example on Amazon)
TemTem (example on Amazon)

If you're not interested but know someone who might be, please point them my way. I'm about $70 shy of being where I need to in order to cover bills after that vet trip yesterday, so it would help a lot if I could manage to sell any of these games.

For payment, I have CashApp ($Settiai), PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle (nancy.lynn.foster@gmail.com).

Current Mood: hopeful

goodbyebird

( Like, this really shouldn't work? But now it's an Armand song? I can't make it not be! )

Also, a fun game some yt channels play is picking a deck for each of the characters in a show they love, and to me Mio Im's Tarot screams Armand. It's got something to do with the sparse nature of it, the limited bone/dust gray palette, obviously all the bones hehe.

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: busy

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

rmc28

It's been a whole adventure watching Heated Rivalry go mainstream (for once I can claim I was a fan before it was cool!). I turned on Radio 2 in a hire car on Tuesday evening and the presenter was talking about it. Half the UK ice hockey clubs are making social media posts riffing off the show, or at minimum using music from it in their updates.

But it's also more complicated. Zach Sullivan, one of the very very few out queer professional male hockey players in the world, made an Instagram post a few days ago, about how conflicted he feels about the show. Well worth a read if you have time. Heated Rivalry is a romantic fantasy, the hockey aspects are often wrong, and I agree with Zach that I'm not at all sure the enthusiasm over the show is making things better for closeted male players right now. (I hope it will in the long term, but I worry about the harm right now.)

Also, I am developing a visceral loathing for the phrase "boy aquarium" for hockey rinks.

it's gross
it's not just boys (men) who play ice hockey
please stop sexualising the spaces where people play and get changed

That last point: I play with two mixed (male-dominated) teams, I get changed in the same room as the men, and because my teams are not gross and the changing room is not a sexualised space, I feel safe doing so. If I changed separately, I would miss out on a whole load of the team connection and conversation, all the stuff that creates a team out of a bunch of people who turn up in the same place each week. So I stay and change with my team, and it's not a big deal, and I don't want people to make it a big deal.

sholio

9. More scenes from a Babylon 5 fixit AU.

I ended up doing a number of additional prompt fills from the same universe as this fill (#4 in the previous post, major series spoilers).

( 1000 words or so of fixit snippets from the same post-canon AU )

10. And while I'm keeping the spoiler stuff confined to its own post, another B5 spoiler fixit AU (same characters) based off "War Without End."

( Under this cut here )

boxofdelights

The Three Ws are:
1. What are you currently reading?

I'm in the middle of The Great Transition, Nick Fuller Googins, for solarpunk book club. The transition is to a sustainable way of living. There's a lot of horror in the immediate past, and a lot of life that is just gone forever. The two viewpoint characters are a teenage girl and her father. Her father, who did heroic work during the crisis, when he was a teenager, wants to focus on how much better things are now, and how we are all working together to make them even better. Her mother, who did different kinds of heroic work, says no, we can't relax: the people who caused and profited from the crisis still have too much money and power, and they are working to turn us back to the exploitive and destructive path. We have to stop them.

I'm enjoying it, except that the teenage girl has an (occasionally too-vividly described) eating disorder.

2. What did you recently finish reading?

The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans, for Tawanda book group. Much better than I was expecting.
Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, for classics book group. Last read when I was a teenager, when all that sexism and racism was just normal.
Algorithms of Oppression, by Saffiya Noble, for Slow Book Club. This was a hard read, in both subject matter and writing style, so it was good to have the book club to talk it over with, a few chapters at a time.
A Sorceress Comes to Call, by T. Kingfisher, for SF book group. A delight.

3. What do you think you’ll read next?

The Last Hour Between Worlds, by Melissa Caruso, for SF book group. If I can find it.

sonia

There is a general strike called for Friday January 23 in Minnesota. Stay home from work if it feels right, and definitely don't cross any picket lines, including the electronic ones of shopping at big corporations like Amazon, etc. (if you can avoid it).

From my union:
"This is a verified page fundraising support for the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO and Working Partnerships' 2026 rapid response effort to meet the needs of impacted union members, worker center members, and their families..."
https://workingpartnerships.betterworld.org/campaigns/support-impacted-union-families

Here is how you can help:

Posts by

naomikritzer

How to help if you are outside Minnesota.

She covers a variety of topics, including how to start preparing for if and when this shit comes to your home state, and the suggestion to talk About immigration, and make it clear you think it’s GOOD.

If you are in Minnesota.

conuly

Ms. Marcus says that an occasional poem is a poem
written about something
important
or special
that's gonna happen
or already did.
Think of a specific occasion, she says—and write about it.

Like what?! Lamont asks.
He's all slouched down in his seat.
I don't feel like writing about no occasion.

How about your birthday? Ms. Marcus says.
What about it? Just a birthday. Comes in June and it ain't
June, Lamont says. As a matter of fact,
he says, it's January and it's snowing.
Then his voice gets real low and he says
And when it's January and all cold like this
feels like June's a long, long ways away.

The whole class looks at Ms. Marcus.
Some of the kids are nodding.
Outside the sky looks like it's made out of metal
and the cold, cold air is rattling the windowpanes
and coming underneath them too.

I seen Lamont's coat.
It's gray and the sleeves are too short.
It's down but it looks like a lot of the feathers fell out
a long time ago.
Ms. Marcus got a nice coat.
It's down too but real puffy so
maybe when she's inside it
she can't even tell January from June.

Then write about January, Ms. Marcus says, that's
an occasion.
But she looks a little bit sad when she says it
Like she's sorry she ever brought the whole
occasional poem thing up.

I was gonna write about Mama's funeral
but Lamont and Ms. Marcus going back and forth
zapped all the ideas from my head.

I guess them arguing
on a Tuesday in January's an occasion
So I guess this is an occasional poem.

*************

Link

conuly

No real symptoms, but I'm a little stuffy and super sleepy.

******************************

( Read more... )

sovay

In the midst of everything, we still have birthdays, and for

spatch's fifty-first I took him to Porter Square Books and on the roundabout way home we collected dinner from Il Casale. It started to snow on the way back, the light salting flakes of an all-day deep-freeze. I have my fingers crossed for an Arctic explosion this weekend.

I have written another fill (AO3) for

threesentenceficathon. WERS played Dave Herlihy's "Good Trouble" (2025) and I had to get home to trace his voice to Boston's own post-punk O Positive. I wish I could call the hundred-year tides against the people who have no right to the streets of my grandparents' city. Failing that, it still matters to be alive.

Current Music: Dry Cleaning, "Joy"

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: drained

aurumcalendula

January 21 - 'Dream place to live?' for

corvidology:

( Read more... )

(there are still slots open for the January Talking Meme here)

sholio

New Dresden book, which I inhaled over the last two days!

( All the spoilers )

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: cheerful

torachan

1. I took Carla to the airport this morning before work and she has arrived safe and sound in Wisconsin.

2. Our heat spell is over and it was chilly and overcast today. It might even rain tomorrow, though the forecast has gone down from 50% to like 25%, so maybe not.

3. I love when cats morph into their slug form.

ursula

glowingfish asked:

The Golden Age of published science-fiction was more or less from 1955 to 1975 (lets say). Why did it end when it did? Do you think that science-fiction (or fantasy) published after 1975 was different, or do you just think it had less ability to become part of the "canon"?

This is really non-standard periodization! Wikipedia has the Golden Age of science fiction starting in the late 1930s, in connection with sci-fi magazine publishing history; the end of your period is solidly New Wave.

The counter-argument is the aphorism that the Golden Age of science fiction is twelve; by that rule, it's interesting to think about who was twelve in 1955-1975, or whatever guidelines you want to pick, and what influence they might have had on defining a canon, once they reached their twenties or thirties. The people who were twelve between 1955 and 1975 were mostly baby boomers, in the standard US generational framework; that was my parents' generation (and

glowingfish's, I'm guessing), and it makes sense that the stories they considered formative would seem quasi-canonized to our generation.

Profile

skygiants

January 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Page Summary

lydamorehouse - Antifa Regimental Gear!
rachelmanija - The Darkness Outside Us, by Eliot Schrefer
osprey_archer - Late October
settiai - For Sale: Nintendo Switch games
goodbyebird - Me just screaming NO as Armand claims a song for himself.
princessofgeeks - also
princessofgeeks - ARGH Heated Rivalry rec
rmc28 - It's always more complicated
sholio - 3 Sentence Ficathon, part three (all B5 fixit edition)
boxofdelights - reading Wednesday
sonia - Links: Minnesota general strike, and how to help
conuly - Occasional Poem by Jacqueline Woodson
conuly - I wonder if, despite my best efforts, I've managed to come down with a mild cold
sovay - No, I'll build a cute flower border
settiai - Aurendor D&D: Summary for 1/21 Game
aurumcalendula - January Talking Meme - Dream place to live?
sholio - Dresden Files: Twelve Months
princessofgeeks - Heated Rivalry rec
torachan - Daily Happiness
ursula - January journal: science fiction periodization

Style Credit

Style: by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jan. 22nd, 2026 06:42 pm