ase

This one got occluded by festivities - Converts by Melanie McDonagh review – roads to Rome:

There is, too, a notable lack of women in this book, notwithstanding chapters on Gwen John, Spark and the Oxford philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe.

So, not just literary stars who took The Road to Rome and NO LETITIA FAIRFIELD who probably breaks a lot of the patterns by continuing to be a left-wing and feminist (stroppily so) public health doctor and vocal against what we would now call patriarchal misogyny within the Church (she was so Dame Rebecca's sister even if they didn't get on).

***

Lucy Mangan on John Lewis's 'members' lounge' - I have a distant recollection that back in the day when department stores were first A Thing, they did in fact have lounges where shopping ladies could repose themselves, along with facilities. Probably not drinkies and chocs, though.

***

The only known photographs of mathematician and computing pioneer Ada Lovelace have been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery just before they were expected to be sold to a private buyer. Fairly early instances of the photographic art, too.

***

Murkying the waters: The Lies and Falsifications of Oliver Sacks:

Rachel Aviv explored the personal journals of the celebrated neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks. What she found was shocking: he had fabricated and embellished some of his most well-known work — like Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

***

On a rather different diary story: the prolonged saga of publishing Pepys: who would have believed this, over whether to go ahead and include all Samuel's more smutty adventures:

In 1960, while Penguin was being prosecuted for the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Magdalene sought the advice of its fellows on whether to proceed with a complete edition. C.S. Lewis argued that it would be ‘pusillanimous and unscholarly’ to hold back. Society, he wrote, was already so corrupted that the supposed further harm of ‘printing a few, obscure and widely separated passages in a very long and expensive book, seems to me unrealistic or even hypocritical’.

Yay Jack!

apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260102.html

In 2011, on January 20,

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260102.html

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3189/

They're not generally used for crewed spacecraft because astronauts HATE going around the corners.

https://xkcd.com/3189/

science_blog_feed

Posted by Ben Sullivan

https://scienceblog.com/scientists-turn-brains-support-staff-into-precision-inhibitors/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573289

https://scienceblog.com/scientists-turn-brains-support-staff-into-precision-inhibitors/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573289

science_blog_feed

Posted by ScienceBlog.com

https://scienceblog.com/sciencechina/2026/01/02/green-hydrogen-just-got-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-thanks-to-sugar/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573285

https://scienceblog.com/sciencechina/2026/01/02/green-hydrogen-just-got-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-thanks-to-sugar/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573285

science_blog_feed

Posted by Ben Sullivan

https://scienceblog.com/astronomers-finally-weigh-a-rogue-planet-drifting-alone-through-the-galaxy/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573282

https://scienceblog.com/astronomers-finally-weigh-a-rogue-planet-drifting-alone-through-the-galaxy/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573282

science_blog_feed

Posted by Ben Sullivan

https://scienceblog.com/scientists-grow-a-breathing-lung-on-a-chip-using-one-persons-cells/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573279

https://scienceblog.com/scientists-grow-a-breathing-lung-on-a-chip-using-one-persons-cells/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573279

science_blog_feed

Posted by Ben Sullivan

https://scienceblog.com/tumor-bacteria-may-sabotage-immunotherapy-in-head-and-neck-cancer/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573276

https://scienceblog.com/tumor-bacteria-may-sabotage-immunotherapy-in-head-and-neck-cancer/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573276

science_blog_feed

Posted by ScienceBlog.com

https://scienceblog.com/sciencechina/2026/01/02/chinas-fusion-reactor-breaks-density-ceiling-that-has-limited-tokamaks-for-decades/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573271

https://scienceblog.com/sciencechina/2026/01/02/chinas-fusion-reactor-breaks-density-ceiling-that-has-limited-tokamaks-for-decades/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573271

science_blog_feed

Posted by Ben Sullivan

https://scienceblog.com/flames-bone-and-memory-africas-oldest-cremation-revealed/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573267

https://scienceblog.com/flames-bone-and-memory-africas-oldest-cremation-revealed/

https://scienceblog.com/?p=573267

oursin

Partner's substituted veggie burgers had to be panfried rather than ovencooked (we actually usually spend a fair amount of time making sure that they can) and have RUINED the frying pan with some adherent substance which scrubbing and soaking has failed to shift.

Fortunately we live in the future and I was a) able to consult Which about the best frying pans (they have quite recently surveyed these, yay) and b) order one for same day click and collect at the local Argos.

Even if we entirely failed in entering the details to get our Nectar points on the transaction.

In other news, it appears that there was SNOW some time earlier today or last night which was still lying in shadowed spots when I went for my walk. Bitterly cold out but very bright.

Parakeet disporting around the back gardens and adjacent park.

We have not seen anything more of the fox which came right up the steps from the garden to the back door, after a leisurely descent left its marker on the garden fence, and then got into it with next door's cat, which was sitting on the back fence going 'come and 'ave a go if you think you're 'ard enough'.

philomytha

I matched one of my 'why not try this' fandoms this year in Yuletide and had a lovely request for Heyer's Cotillion. I've never written Heyer fic, or any Regency romance fic unless you count the more Heyeresque parts of Bujold, but she's a longstanding favourite author and I wanted to have a go, and Cotillion is such a fun book, one of my absolute favourites of hers. And Lord Legerwood is one of Heyer's many delightfully sardonic older men and so writing his POV was tremendous fun - I had a couple of false starts trying to write something for this request, but once I started writing Lord Legerwood it all came together very smoothly. And a comedy of misunderstandings seemed very appropriate for Heyer.

By Special Licence (Heyer - Cotillion, canon pairings, epilogue, 2000 words)

To get into the spirit of the thing, as well as reading Cotillion a couple of times through I have been slowly reading through all the Heyers, partly to get the voice and also because it's always like this when I pick up one Heyer: I have to read all the other ones immediately afterwards. I haven't reread any of the Georgian ones yet because I wanted to keep my head in the Regency voice, but now that my fic is all done I will be getting to them because what can beat These Old Shades - the first Heyer I ever read, not necessarily the best place to start except of course it is the best place to start. Anyway, I have been reading through the Regencies more or less in favourite order, so I've now reached Arabella - which has many things I do love but the 'told a silly lie and now have to stick to it' trope isn't one of them. (Top ten Heyer Regencies, not in order: Frederica, Venetia, A Civil Contract, Cotillion, Friday's Child, The Nonesuch, The Foundling, The Unknown Ajax, The Reluctant Widow, Black Sheep.) But even my least favourite Heyers are still fun to reread.

And as well as what I wrote, the authors of my gifts are revealed:

morvidra wrote Happiness In Time Of Joy (Wimsey missing scenes from Busman's Honeymoon)

longwhitecoats wrote Double Exposure (long Wimsey casefic with Harriet/Peter/Bunter)

fullborn wrote Wandrers Nachtlied ('The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp' Theo/Clive fic).

Thank you all very much!

cahn

I ended up reading a few things over the fall :)

( This got longish. Don Karlos (Schiller), Heart of Princess Osra and Prisoner of Zenda (Hope), Sieben Jahre (Kinkel) )

apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260101.html

Auroral Corona

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260101.html

andraste

I wrote a Yuletide Treat this year! When I went to count I found out that I have written exactly twenty-one Yuletide stories in twenty-one years. (I didn't participate in 2003 but it's nice to know I've average one a year since then.)

Out Of The Loop (1433 words) by Andraste
Fandom: Groundhog Day - Minchin/Rubin
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Phil Connors, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, POV Outsider, Yuletide Treat

Summary: Phil's boss thought he had a pretty good idea of what the consequences of sending his weather guy to Punxsutawney would be. He could not have been more wrong.

rachelmanija

I wrote three stories this Yuletide. The first two won't make much sense if you don't know the canons. With the third, all you really need to know is that mushi are magical creatures and Ginko solves people's mushi-related problems.

28 Years Later

Memento Mori. Dr. Kelson creates his masterpiece.

I really liked the movie, which is extremely different from the first one (also extremely different from the second, which I don't care for) and also extremely different from the brilliant trailer, which introduced me to the astonishing recording from 1915 (!) of actor Taylor Holmes reciting Kipling's poem "Boots." It's a post-apocalypse movie that's partly a coming of age story, partly an action/horror movie, and partly a beautiful and moving drama about life, death, and remembrance. And then there's the last two minutes, which are basically parkour Trainspotting.

I actually matched on The Leftovers, but I liked the 28 Days Later prompt so much that I wrote that instead.

Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey

Hunger. Both Lessa and Kylara are Searched for Nemorth's final clutch.

I just really enjoy writing in this canon. I love the dragons and McCaffrey created a lot of very interesting characters even if she often ended up not knowing quite what to do with them.

Mushishi

A Turn of the Wheel. Ginko encounters an unusual mushi in a village known for pottery.

Mushishi is an incredibly beautiful anime and manga with a dreamy, wistful atmosphere. I saw a prompt for mushi infesting a piece of pottery and could not resist. This story was also inspired by having recently visited Japan in the summer, a time of year I very much do not recommend for a visit if you can possibly avoid it. It's like living in a sauna. Now imagine doing a kiln firing in that sauna.

skygiants

Aha! it's Yuletide reveals time!

So my Yuletide recipient this year was

genarti, who is either just about to find out this fact from my post, or has known for weeks and is just biding her time to reveal her knowledge and I'm just about to find out that fact after she reads this. Stay tuned for breaking developments!

So, for her, I wrote The Villainous Princess Saves Her Kingdom, a fix-it fic for the kdrama Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born about the most dysfunctional lesbian of that whole cast of lesbians picking up various postcanon pieces of herself and incidentally the rest of the troupe.

HOWEVER, for obvious reasons, I had to immediately come up with a decoy fic, so from the beginning having read

raven's Yuletide letter at the same time I happened to be rereading The Dispossessed I decided I was also going to write a treat for

raven that I would present to

genarti as my assignment, which ended up as More A Comment Than A Question, a strange little timebending fic about Shevek's daughter contacting Laia Aseio Odo through time and space and not really necessarily making the most of it.

Tangled webs, etc; after I had confidently reported submitting my decoy fic on deadline to

genarti,

raven's prompt went to the pinch-hit list and I had to frantically fake a different panic than the panic I was actually feeling -- ANYWAY. Hilariously,

raven discovered my identity immediately due to the usernames reveal error whereas

genarti was at church through that entire event and thus remained completely oblivious (unless, of course, she isn't, see first paragraph above.) A very chaotic Yuletide on several fronts! But I had a lot of fun writing both fics although I would prefer not to be wrangling quite this much deception every year.

hamsterwoman

Happy New Year! I'm having a fairly pleasant 2026 so far, and hope you all are too! <3

Yuletide reveals! :D

I wrote two things this year (which, it's been a couple of years since I've managed a treat, and I'm very glad I was able to this year).

My assignment:

Voyages of the Valence: The Lanthanide Cluster Job (7862 words) by hamsterwoman
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Elements - Experiments in Character Design - Kaycie D., Object and Concept Anthropomorphism
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Vanadium (Experiments in Character Design), Chromium (Experiments in Character Design), Iodine (Experiments in Character Design), Rhenium (Experiments in Character Design), Sulfur (Experiments in Character Design), Carbon (Experiments in Character Design), Xenon (Experiments in Character Design), Helium (Experiments in Character Design), Dysprosium (Experiments in Character Design), Indium (Experiments in Character Design), Thulium (Experiments in Character Design), Rhodium (Experiments in Character Design), Yttrium (Experiments in Character Design)
Additional Tags: IN SPACE!, Space Opera
Summary:

Elements IN SPACE!

( Blathering )

The days leading up to story reveals were spent frantically beta-ing a couple of fairly long fics that required a canon primer, so I had given up on the idea of writing a treat. But I felt so blessed by my last-minute crossover treat and the fact that my main gift was in a much rarer fandom than I’d been expecting, that it gave me a sort of second wind – after reveals, obviously, but there was still Madness. And thus:

FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Magical Practitioner Examination (581 words) by hamsterwoman
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns, Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Peter Grant (Rivers of London), Thomas Nightingale
Summary:

Nightingale was aghast at my lack of ophidian knowledge.

( Blathering )

Full text of the ficlet, with the missing bit: ( under here )

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snowflake_challenge is back, with lovely new banners:

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 #1: The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

My intro post from a year ago was mostly current but was missing ~~Elis & John~~ a couple of things that feel too relevant not to mention, so, I’m including an updated one below. As for the other challenge questions:

I love the little bright splash of fannishness that Snowflake brings to the start of the year – it always leads to interesting fandom reflections (my own and other people’s), getting to read/watch/look at things I wouldn’t have come across or taken the plunge on otherwise (fic/vids but also trying new canons), creating things I otherwise wouldn’t have created (one tangible highlight: a couple of years ago I wrote a pantoum, a poetic form I hadn’t tried before, for Snowflake’s “try something new” day, and it was actually published this year, which is pretty cool!), and usually also new friends. Which I guess has also answered the question of what I hope to gain from it this year :)

( fannish me in 2026 )

*

YouTube now apparently also does a Wrapped: ( so here are my fairly predictable results )

*

( Fannish end-of-year meme #2 )