jazzfish | Others

"No one wants to go in there when a random f***ing tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country."
-- oil industry investor, about Venezuela

I was reading a quote from an Exxon exec, talking about how all of Exxon's assets had been nationalized by Venezuela TWICE. Yeah, not a place where oil companies are going to be eager to rush back in to rebuild their infrastructure.

Not going to bother talking about a certain person's habit of changing international policy via social media posts, waste of finger and mental energy.

hunningham

New Year's Resolution - Read for fun!

I want to read for fun, for pleasure, to reread old favourites, to read fan-fiction and not to be waylaid by 'should read..' or 'best of...' I'm planning to visit brick-and-mortar bookshops and take my own sweet time browsing and selecting a book to read. I'm going to pick a book which I want to read right now this minute, not one which looks interesting and will just be added to the TBR pile.

Inspired by this Tom Gauld cartoon which I have printed out and stuck on to the fridge.

douqi posting in

baihe_media

Happy new year all!

The first print edition of a baihe novel to be open for pre-order for the year is Yu Shuang's tragic contemporary romance The Guest (嘉宾), which is being brought out under the title 别时茫茫 (going to just dodge the task of translation this because my brain is currently not up to the task of translating a Ba Juyi reference). This is a mainland edition and will be in traditional Chinese and censored (I'm kind of curious to see how they're going to manage the censoring of a tragedy that fundamentally arises from institutional and societal homophobia). Pre-orders can be made via the following bookshops:

The web version of the novel can be read here. Some details of the book art can be found here. I reviewed this book here.

princessofgeeks

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

thebibliophibian_feed

Posted by Nicky

https://breathesbooks.com/2026/01/11/review-solo-leveling-vol-11/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=19579

Solo Leveling

by Dubu, Chugong

Genres: Fantasy, Manga
Pages: 312
Series: Solo Leveling #11
Rating: four-stars

Synopsis:
After saving Jinho from the vengeful Dongsoo Hwang, Jinwoo makes a public declaration that he will protect his family and friends no matter what. But when a close ally is killed in a sudden attack by the otherworldly Monarchs, Jinwoo is forced to reexamine who it is he wants to protect—and just how far he’ll go to do so.

It’s difficult at this point — volume 11 — to say stuff about the Solo Leveling manhwa that doesn’t risk being either spoilery or obvious. As usual, Jinwoo’s ridiculously OP, and it’s glorious to see. We get a bit more info about Jinwoo’s dad and what’s to come, and we get some big badass new enemies for him (who he immediately trashtalks, love him).

I did feel a bit sad for Jinho when Jinwoo referred to someone else as his “only” friend, though! Unless there’s something weird going on with the translation, that seems unfair. Not that Jinho heard it, but still, ouch.

I must admit that the (frequent) fight scenes usually don’t do a lot for me because I’m not great with visual interpretations, so I love when Jinwoo stops to strategise, or others comment on his fights. It’s quite the spectacle, just not something I find visually very useful.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

https://breathesbooks.com/2026/01/11/review-solo-leveling-vol-11/

https://breathesbooks.com/?p=19579

tozka

🎬 The Residence: Created by Paul William Davies. With Uzo Aduba, Giancarlo Esposito, Molly Griggs, Ken Marino. Inside the White House's staff residence and the lives which workers share with the First Family. 🔗

Binge rewatched The Residence today and I liked it much more this time around (tho I still think it's a bit too long).

In my first watch, I was too anxious to get to the solution and it became frustrating when they went on tangents. Knowing the solution and watching it again was much more fun. I enjoyed the humor more and caught some things about the murder motive that I missed the first time around.

I wish they'd do another season, or even a movie! I love the Cordelia Cupp character.

petra

I recommended the first story in this series when I read it in Yuletide, suspecting but not being sure at the time that it was by

sanguinity.

I love William Bush's POV too:

Too Late, Too Late (2008 words) by sanguinity
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hornblower (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: William Bush, Horatio Hornblower
Additional Tags: POV William Bush, Episode: e07 Loyalty (Hornblower), Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss
Series: Part 2 of The Worst Part of Waking Up
Summary:

Bush is too late to the beach to stop the firing squad.

Bonus Bush point-of-view on the beach scene.

Current Mood: topsy-turvy
Current Music: (fanfare) It's the bloody Indy!

sholio

I FOUND IT AGAIN. I read a post on Tumblr a while back on a particularly nicely done instance of color symbolism with Londo on B5, and I finally found it. (More beneath the cut.)

( Spoilers for the whole show )

thewayne

This is an old article from October '25, I'm clearing out old tabs.

It's quite simple. The basic plan is to ensure that they are properly managing current and projected electrical needs and growth, and that they don't have crypto mining and AI data centers popping up everywhere and draining all of their generation capacity. Keep Canadian power generation for the province's residents and local industry - to which I say, GO CANADA!

There are useful aspects to AI/LLMs, but not in the form of generative AI and chat bots. Investors are seeking quick bucks and are creating a bubble: while there's no telling when it'll burst, we're going to see a lot of sobbing and knocking on government doors for bailouts when it happens. Can't happen too soon, IMO.

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/10/21/british-columbia-to-permanently-ban-new-crypto-mining-projects-from-grid

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/237254/british-columbia-to-permanently-ban-new-crypto-mining-projects-from-grid

dancesontrains

Challenge 3: Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favourite character, anything at all.

If it wasn't for ~~the power of neurodivergence~~ transformative fandom I wouldn't have met my fiancé? Sey followed me on Tumblr around eleven years ago after I wrote some fic with seir fave character (Earth-2 Harry Wells from the Flash CW s2), we started chatting over Tumblr messages, and never stopped :)

(It'll be eight years of being in a queerplatonic relationship this June, assuming things continue to go well.)

Challenge 4: Rec the contents of your last page - any website you like.

The pet site I mentioned in my second Snowflake post, Flight Rising - https://www1.flightrising.com/

Here, I just joined the community

smallweb, focused on all things smallweb, including:
- personal websites
- fediverse
- geminispace
- other small community spaces
- webrings
- curated directories

It looks interesting.

boxofdelights

We were walking the dogs yesterday and I took a photo that got 405 favorites and 226 boosts on Mastodon:
( A little free library in a tree trunk, and the book I took from it )

Neighborhoods always feel better with Little Free Libraries.

roga

...........see I made that previous post and now now I finally feel like I can make a post about normal! life! stuff! and fandom!!! this is exciting.

I will just say that I am, as one would expect, WELL on the Heated Rivalry train. After finishing the show and the main youtube-reaction-podcasts/videos, I needed more so I went ahead and read the books the show was based on, and then immediately read the other books in the series, and my MAIN loves are Ilya and Shane, my close second favorites are EVERY SINGLE OTHER SHIP IN THAT SERIES, I am so far gone my god. I'm now debating whether I need a break from hockey novels (to be clear, a break means moving on to fics), or whether I should continue to Rachel Reid's standalone hockey novels, despite the fact that her books make me, well, very distracted when I should be working, which is not ideal. I think maybe it would be smarter to hold off for the weekend.

For now, I have written zero words of HR fics but have many ideas, so if anyone has any idea of how to get writing without a yuletide deadline forcing me to, please let me know! Also: if there are any HR fic exchanges I am happy to hear about them. I'm not in any HR-dedicated discords and do not think I will stumble upon such an exchange independently.

Other than that, more fandom yays:
-The Pitt season 2 \o/
-Stranger Things final season! That one is less of a \o/ lol, but I still enjoyed watching it, criticisms and all. I love those kids.
-A Thousand Blows is back for the second half of its season! I haven't watched it yet but I loved the first half and can't wait for more.
-New Josh Charles show aka Best Medicine! Okay, it's not great yet, but I'm giving it a chance.
-Avengers Doomsday trailers! I have them but I love them ugh Marvel are truly assholes for doing this to me.
-Over on AO3, spqr has been posting Masters of the Air fics which have been so great they have sucked me right into that fandom.
-(Interspersed, of course, by HR fics, naturally)

And on the local theater front: I went to the new production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle yesterday, at Habima theater. Other than being one of my favorite plays, and absolutely timeless in message, it was such a gorgeous production. Beautiful set design, including a constantly shifting backdrop of sand art that was sculpted live by the actors on stage; beautiful compositions and singing; great acting, and a great translation. It was maybe a little more immersive than Brecht would have liked, but sorry dude, if you don't want me getting emotionally invested in your characters you should have stopped writing emotionally investing stories!)

I couldn't find a trailer for the production, but if you have any interest in what it looked like, there are snippets of the stage and cast here.

rolanni

The Long Back Yard

The toilet is fixed. Steve Symonds deserves a twenty-five flower parade.

I would like the record to show that I? could never have fixed this myself. A hacksaw was involved.

'nough said.
#
Sunday. Cloudy and cooler than it's been tending.

Got up early because that's when I woke up. Oatmeal for breakfast. Chicken breast for lunch if it happens to have thawed. If not, something else.

Wrote, oh? 700 words this morning. Given the timing of breakfast, it's probably not too early to start investigating the idea of lunch. I will do my duty the cats first, in the interests of going back to writing after lunch.

Yes, I am pushing, but I'm at the stage where "almost done!" is driving the writing engine, and, as I may have mentioned once or twice: I'm really tired of this book.

I put up the "Roman" curtain over the window in the front door, and while it's better than what was there, I'm not convinced it's actually what I want for the sliders in Steve's office. If the tie-ups were longer so I could actually adjust the shade to the height of my choosing, which you would think would be the point of this design, I might be convinced. As it is -- meh.

I watched two? three, maybe? episodes of Spy Family last night and it is not for me. May try another title this evening, if I don't faceplant first.

I am aware that I am taking way long with the Agent of Change readalong -- I plead illness. Also, yes, I, too, am reading Conflict of Honors. Things will happen as they happen at this point. Total chaos for the win.

How's everybody doing today?
#
Steve Miller, The Empire State Carousel, Fennimore Farm Museum, Cooperstown NY, June 21, 2023. Photo by Sharon Lee.

#
Change of plan, because weather and also brain wants a rest.

So! Wrote just a smidge over 1,000 words today. WIP now at 125,440ish.

You know how you're sick, after you're well again, you have to do all the things you let slide? Yeah, that would be my realization today. If there's eight feet of snow on the ground on Tuesday, I've got to get the trash to the curb, so I went out while it was still warm(ish) to load the toboggan with trash bags and fill up the recycling bin. So, that's ready for Tuesday morning, no matter what.

Also, I missed changing out the cat boxes, ref "sick" above, so that will be my next trick, after which I get a shower, sweats, and ice cream in my blanket fort.

This means I can write tomorrow, and get the trash out before I have to be at PT on Tuesday morning (boy, am I gonna be in trouble with the therapist), with the least possible amount of exertion, and, hopefully, no crazypants.

I'll just say my good-evenings now. Kind of a weird day, but, some days are weird.

Everybody stay safe.

moon_custafer

I’m trying to get back to my ongoing writing, but I’ve also finally decided to start posting Meadowville in weekly installments on Ao3, as it’s more-or-less complete and I’ve long since given up on the idea of trying to publish professionally. First couple of chapters are up:

Welcome to Meadowville (6791 words) by moon_custafer
Chapters: 2/?
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Original Fiction, 1950s, Fantasy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Amnesia, Domestic Fluff, Period Typical Attitudes, though not always
Summary: Long Island, 1950. The Healys—Walt, Hanna, and their daughter Livia—aren’t quite the stereotypical American nuclear family they might appear to be at first glance, but they’re happy.
Then a mysterious mushroom ring appears around the neighborhood, and Walt begins to question his identity and childhood amnesia.

roga

I wrote this on the week of October 13th – maybe one or two days later – and never finished the post, so never posted the post, and here I am stuck in this limbo of how do you post about anything when I still haven’t addressed That. So I will just was that now and take it from there.

( flashback to October musings )

oursin

Last week's bread held out for most of the week.

Friday night supper: ven pongal (South Indian khichchari).

Saturday breakfast rolls: Tassajarra method, 50:50% wholemeal/strong white flour, maple syprup, dried cranberries, turned out nicely.

Today's lunch: game crumble - the game mix (partridge, pheasant and venison) casseroled in red wine with onion, garlic, bay leaf, juniper berries, coriander seed, 5-pepper blend and salt, before putting the crumble topping (mixture of approx 2:1:1 wholemeal flour/strong white flour/pinhead oatmeal) on for the final half-hour; served with tenderstem broccoli tips which I cooked thusly - sizzled some chopped ginger and cumin seeds in oilve oil, turned the broccoli in this, added some water and steamed for half an hour, turned out rather well although I think the original recipe said fennel seeds....; and stirfried tat soi.

ysabetwordsmith

This new imaging technology breaks the rules of optics

Scientists have unveiled a new way to capture ultra-sharp optical images without lenses or painstaking alignment. The approach uses multiple sensors to collect raw light patterns independently, then synchronizes them later using computation. This sidesteps long-standing physical limits that have held optical imaging back for decades. The result is wide-field, sub-micron resolution from distances that were previously impossible.

I immediately thought of how many species have multiple eyes. Vertebrates favor two, but invertebrates often have more. Spiders run to 8. Scallops can have hundreds. Since eyes are delicate and expensive tissue, there must be a compelling advantage, specially for more than 1-2 of them. I would suspect that greater detail is among the advantages.

Current Mood: busy

wychwood

Friday morning we had about 8-10cm of snow and public transport wasn't running, so I worked from home. All the main roads around me were clear pretty much throughout, but side roads etc didn't get clear - and then everything half-melted and refroze so anywhere that still had snow got pretty miserable. The pavements on my way to church yesterday had about 3-4cm of lumpy ice, and it was not a fun time, although it also didn't feel particularly dangerous as long as I walked carefully.

At ten minutes before Mass we had six people in the building including me, the priest, and one other altar server. As we went in we'd hit about twenty, and by the end of the homily we were up to 45, which is a bit under half the usual number (although there were a lot of unfamiliar faces, possibly coming to a closer church than they would usually attend?). I was very surprised by the number of latecomers; I left home half an hour earlier than usual, to be sure of getting there OK, and it's not like anyone didn't know there was ice everywhere. I can understand not coming in those conditions, but just, idk, leaving at the usual time? that seems weird to me!

Anyway, it's warmed up a lot today and has been raining for a couple of hours; remnants of the packed ice will no doubt hang around for a while, but hopefully most of the pavements will be more-or-less clear tomorrow morning when I leave for work.

Dad's off to France again this week, so I'm back over there next Monday for the week. My chances of ever catching up with the laundry are receding into the distance and I'm starting to feel stressed about the weekend after, since I'll be there until Sunday morning, then into a double choir rehearsal, then back in the office on the Monday. Probably it will be fine but I need to do a lot of thinking about food planning etc at some point this week. I was having such a nice relaxing time too!!!

ysabetwordsmith posting in

birdfeeding

Today is cloudy and cold. It snowed a little last night, just enough to leave riffles in the grass and some larger white patches in the fields.

I fed the birds. I've seen a large flock of sparrows, several mourning doves, and a starling.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 1/11/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I've seen a male cardinal.

EDIT 1/11/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I've seen one female and two male cardinals.

EDIT 1/11/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Current Mood: busy

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Tucker McKinnon

Words are inadequate

Adventures in Mamboland

"Jazz Fish, a saxophone playing wanderer, finds himself in Mamboland at a critical phase in his life." --Howie Green, on his book Jazz Fish Zen

Yeah. That sounds about right.

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Indeed do many things come to pass

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Doonesbury Say What

New Year's Resolution

New Year's Resolution - Read for fun!

Pre-Orders Open for The Guest (嘉宾)

NFL playoffs

Review – Solo Leveling, vol 11

Solo Leveling

by Dubu, Chugong

watched: the residence

Recommendation: Too Late, Too Late - Hornblower amalgam

B5 color theorizing

British Columbia to ban all new crypto mining operations!

Snowflake Challenge: day 3, day 4

tree trunk library

In completely different news

In which the plan changes, and changes again

Meadowville

Six o'clock after the war

Culinary

Science

also have not finished reading one (1) actual book this year so far though i have purchased sixteen

Birdfeeding

Birdfeeding

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