sorcyress | Network

I really hope I'm ready to go back to work on Thursday. I'm feeling better, but not great and was wondering if I should try to go to work tomorrow. Then a teacher friend texted me that my sub today, a former student, said he'd be happy to take my classes tomorrow. A sign! So I called in. I just finished lesson plans.

siderea

2026 Jan 6: Görkem Şen (Yaybahar on YT): Yaybahar III Nadiri

Watch on YouTube

The description text:

The essence of gold was rare, he conquered with his virtue, offered his gifts and fell behind the sun...

Dedicated to the soul of my dear friend's father, Nadir Oğuz...

I am surmising that "Nadiri" means "Of Nadir". Yaybahar is the instrument, the artist is its inventor:

The name yaybahar (pronounced /jajba'har/) has Turkish origin. It is a composite of two words: yay means a "string" or a "coiled string" and bahar means the season "spring." According to Gorkem Sen, the name is derived from the idea of a new life or a new beginning. [1]

I assume this is the third one of its kind the artist has made.

Artist's website: https://www.gorkemsen.com/

shadowkat

Well, some good news? I misread the Bed Bugs notice on the entrance of my apartment building. Not surprising - considering it was in tiny print. ( I brought home my reading glasses from work to read it properly.) I read after I asked a neighbor if we should be worried about it - and he looked at me quizzically, and said, not really, although I'm always concerned.

Then I read it. It stated:

Units: 81
Inspected: All
Infested:0
Cleaned: 0
Number found: 0

And the date of the inspection.

No wonder I was confused. Without my reading glasses, 0's look like 8's and 9's.

I worried about this all day long, went on the internet (which of course made it worse) - and finally convinced myself to read the sign in the lobby again, but with my reading glasses this time around.

Whew. No bed bugs in the building.

***

Now, I just have to figure out the will - first things first complete it, have it reviewed by lawyer, then sent, notarized and witnessed. And try not to worry about the knees. I'm icing both now. And hobbling very slowly up and down steps. Plus side? I'm grateful I moved years ago to this apartment complex - it's highly accessible for folks with ailments. It has a ramp to the entrance, so you can avoid the two steps. Then once inside - two elevators. So I don't have to go up and down the steps. And, I can either do laundry in the basement or send it out to be down - still without having to go up and down steps. I can also order food to be delivered to me.
Not certain about pharmaceuticals (other places yes, just not sure about my pharmacy).

***

Thought about the Spike/Buffy ("Spuffy") and Angel/Cordy ("Cangel") relationships, and ( Read more... )

I liked how the writers delved in the nasty consequences of using another person to "get off" or using sex as a drug. While alcohol and other drugs - are problematic, using sex as a drug is kind of similar to vampirism - in that you are using someone, with little care to how they feel, to get yourself off. Our society tends to handwave that - or generalize and state all consensual and kinky sex is bad, ie demonize the people and the act of sex (particularly if the act varies from whatever is considered the norm). (Let's face it - our global society and culture has serious issues regarding sex and sexual behavior. Always has. They also like to generalize (no despite what people might think we all don't experience sex the same way, our bodies are very different from each other, and no two people experience or need the same thing in regards to it, everyone is different). Part of our problem is - we can't talk about it in a way that doesn't involve ribald humor or running for the hills. A lot of folks can't say the words vagina and penis. And come up with other words for these parts of their anatomy.) One of the things I loved about Buffy is how the writers satirized societal views regarding sex and the culture's relationship to sex. ( Read more... )

kaffy_r

Testing, Testing

I'm going to post something without coding the text color, just to see if a change I made with help from

muccamukk will do that.

Woo-hoo! It worked!

jamethiel

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

somedayseattle

I’m up to the Dick Doctors to hopefully have this catheter to remove from my stomach… again. The doctor is going to check me out and then taking an ultrasound to see if I’m avoiding all the wee wee in my bladder. I’m pretty certain I am. I have been going quite regularly for the seven weeks since the first time, they said, they would take it out. Fingers and wiener crossed.

ysabetwordsmith

Nearly all women in STEM secretly feel like impostors

A striking 97.5% of women pursuing graduate degrees in STEM report moderate or higher levels of impostorism.

Nearly all women in STEM graduate programs report feeling like impostors, despite strong evidence of success. This mindset leads many to dismiss their achievements as luck and fear being “found out.” Research links impostorism to worse mental health, higher burnout, and increased thoughts of dropping out. Supportive environments and shifting beliefs about intelligence may help break the cycle.

That's probably because 97.5% of their male coworkers are misogynistic assholes, and so are a lot of people even outside of STEM.

After decades of being told that girls are bad at math, go play with dolls, harassment as soon as their breasts start growing, male students being put in charge of groups, professors stealing their work, getting lower grades than they deserve, struggling to find a job, their name being left off papers or awards, promotions going to less-qualified males, fighting for funds ... of course women realize that they are aren't wanted, aren't welcome, and nobody likes them.

The last 2.5% of women in STEM? They don't give a shit if people like them, and they aren't there to stroke anyone's ego or penis. Shut up and work. Impostor syndrome? It can be beaten to death with facts.

Current Mood: busy

kaffy_r

Five Years Ago

This happened.

I will not forget. Nor will I forgive.

rebeccmeister

The speaker for the first evening plenary of this conference was a person named Jessica Hernandez, and centered on connections between Western scientific understanding and indigenous science/ways of knowing. It was quite interesting with respect to some of the questions I've mentioned here in the past, about frameworks for teaching about Biology, but it's going to take me a little while to digest and articulate what I might do differently in light of what I heard about from the talk (the main element that stuck with me was an alternate presentation of the context of Western science among other factors that affect how we think about and interact with the world around us and more broadly - a spiderweb analogy). Anyway, this is a complex topic to talk about in the midst of current culture wars.

But there was another element of the talk that caught my attention: Hernandez began the talk by talking about her father, who survived what she described as a genocide that occurred during the civil war in El Salvador. I'm not sure I'd heard the Salvadoran civil war described in those terms before, but now it seems to me I should probably spend more time learning more (I think it's this?). What I DO know is that her father is from the part of El Salvador that I got to visit in 1995, where a lot of people wound up fleeing to Guatemala to avoid violent conflict during more intense phases of the war, and where resettlement after the war posed a new series of challenges for everyone.

At the end of the talk, an audience member asked an interesting question: (this is a scientific meeting, so the audience is full of people who identify as scientists) as scientists, we're generally highly aware of how climate change is displacing people in greater numbers and in newer ways than in the past. How will this displacement from traditional homelands affect this context of indigenous thinking and ways of knowing?

This is obviously a hard question without a simple answer; I'm only going to kind of obliquely talk about it. One other element of indigenous science that Hernandez commented on was how, for a while, people were adopting the terminology of "Traditional Ecological Knowledge" as a way of acknowledging indigenous contributions to scientific understanding. However, she noted that the phrasing has caused some people to hyperfixate on the word "Traditional," which pushes a particular and problematic historical view on indigenous understanding. In contrast, indigenous cultures across the globe are living cultures that change through time and in response to changes in the world, and there are tons of examples of that. So she is now using the term "indigenous science" to characterize ways of knowing things about how the world works based on deep/long-term observation and relational thinking. This can therefore include more long-term insights from long-term observation, but also respect the experiences and perspectives of people who relocate/are relocated.

I have a feeling that people who like to keep science in a tidy box will find lots of things to quibble over in all of this. (and I won't claim to have done the best possible job of characterizing what I heard about, in any case!).

My main personal takeaway, especially as someone who has moved around a lot, is that I need to be more deliberate about learning more about the immediate environment around where I live and work, because for all the cases where Western science focuses on generalizability on a global scale, it's connections to the local landscape that are the most powerful for individual learning and lived experience. And that's important for me both as an individual and as a teacher.

ysabetwordsmith

Today is partly cloudy and cool.

I fed the birds. I've seen a large flock of sparrows.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 1/6/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 1/6/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 1/6/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

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

Current Mood: busy

flo_nelja

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

Right now I want to write a love letter to the people who share or have shared my fandom obsessions.

Some of you I only shared a fandom with, and for six month only we were offering each other gifts and visiting each other in real life, and you know? It was still awesome.

Some of you have gotten into fandoms just to be there with be, out of trust for my opinions. Some of you I have gotten into a fandom for you, and it was so worth it.

Some of you we missed each other time-wise, and still, when you get into something I was into ten years ago, you're being all "yeah!" about it, because you remember and same in the other direction, I'm so reading all your old posts.

Thank you all <3

cyphomandra

December was either gaming or Yuletiding. I did not read the Wells in December but I hadn't included them earlier, so here they are.

Libby Lawrence is good at pretending, Jodi McAlister
Looking for Alibrandi, Melina Marchetta
Behind Frenemy Lines, Zen Cho
Compulsory, Martha Wells (short story)
All Systems Red, Martha Wells
Artificial Condition, Martha Wells
Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy, Martha Wells (short story)
Rogue protocol, Martha Wells
Exit strategy, Martha Wells
Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory, Martha Wells (short story)
Network effect, Martha Wells
Fugitive telemetry, Martha Wells
System collapse, Martha Wells

Libby Lawrence is Good at Pretending, Jodi McAlister. Uni theatre YA/new adult romance; Libby sleeps with the overly charming director just before he disappears (but just after he embezzles the group’s money); she doesn’t want to tell her best friend, who has her own issues, or any of the other theatre kids, as although she’s always previously been on the outside with bit parts, the replacement director’s cast her as the lead in Much Ado About Nothing. Messy but fun; the best friend part feels underdeveloped but the theatre stuff is good.

Looking for Alibrandi, Melina Marchetta. I kept feeling that I should have read this before, because it’s such an Australian classic. Josephine Alibrandi, Italian-Australian, is in her final year as a scholarship student at an exclusive Catholic high school; she fights with her mother (who has raised her on her own, despite her family’s disapproval of her single motherhood), goes out with boys, explores her family history and finally meets her father; it’s vivid, believable, and excellently characterised (Josie is prickly and stubborn and appealing, and her growth throughout the novel is great). Also has lots of Sydney in it.

Behind Frenemy Lines, Zen Cho. Kriya Rajasekar associates Charles Goh with the worst moments in her legal career - flubbing an interview, losing cases etc - and is appalled to discover she’s going to have to share an office with him when her boss/mentor takes her with him to a new legal firm. Charles, meanwhile, is appalled to discover he’s been anyone’s nemesis, and is increasingly concerned at how Kriya’s mentor is treating her. I enjoy Cho’s het romcoms (this is in the same continuity as The Friend Zone Experiment) but I don’t love them. This does have some great moments and I particularly like Charles, who determinedly dresses up in cosplay for his best friend’s lesbian sports-anime themed wedding (she and her wife bonded over their love for the fictitious Duke of Badminton series, which made me snort in amusement as someone who very briefly read fanfic for Prince of Tennis) and then takes the Tube to the venue.

I read all of the extant Murderbot books and shorts in a wild binge. I like them but do not feel fannish at all about them, although I can see why other people do. I like Murderbot and the voice is fantastic, but I find the humans rather interchangeable and I don’t like ART, who becomes increasingly prominent as the books go on. I will probably re-read these again at some stage and see if that changes.

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: anxious

signoftea in

common_nature

It started snowing yesterday, and now there's about 5 cm of snow, an amount that is very rare here. I went for a walk to see the beach, because it looks so cool when it's covered in snow. To my surprise, there was even ice on the water! A fragile crust of little floes had formed and seemed to slow down the movement of the waves as they licked the snow away from the breakwater bit by bit.

At first, I didn't hear any bird calls. I did see a few sanderlings darting around, some big birds (probably black-backed gulls) hovering over the sea, and a huge swarm of smaller birds, but they were all far away. I was about to leave when suddenly an impressive formation of geese appeared in the sky. My birding app identified them as barnacle geese. Then the app recorded some more calls, including one from a dunling, a bird I had never seen or heard before.

The snow and the greyish sky skewed my perspective in interesting ways, so that it looked like there were mountains growing out of the sea near the horizon, or like there was a huge wave rolling towards the beach. It felt surreal and a little eerie.

North Sea beach with snow and ice

trobadora

Third headache day in a row; this sucks. (Today is a bit better than yesterday, but I want it to go away! *kicks it*)

Today's writing

Just a little

fandomtrees work, but I'm really losing momentum here. :(

(I did finish my

candyheartsex letter last night, at least. Now I just have to hope someone requests something I can write ... Sign-ups are still open until tomorrow, btw!)

Tally

Day 1:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

philomytha,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 2:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 3:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 4:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 5:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 6:

china_shop,

trobadora

Let me know if I missed anyone! And remember you can drop in or out at any time. :)

ysabetwordsmith

This is today's freebie, inspired by a prompt from

jake67jake.

Maduro kidnapped --
he was quite unpopular,
but it was still wrong

* * *

Notes:

Read a discussion of Venezuela politics.

Current Mood: busy

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/06/the-big-idea-nicole-glover/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59030

When you find there to be a lack of magic in your world, make a new one. That’s exactly what author Nicole Glover set out to do when crafting the whimsical world of her newest novel, The Starseekers. Come along in her Big Idea to see how the ordinary can be made just a little more magical.

NICOLE GLOVER:

I always found it a severe disappointment when I realized as a child that I was living in a world where tea pots weren’t enchanted, ravens didn’t linger on fence posts to give me a quest, and that dragons weren’t snoring away in caves. I didn’t need unicorns or griffins as pets and I never had the urge climb a beanstalk, I just wanted a touch more wonder in the world.

So I did the only thing any reasonable person can do: I started writing fantasy.

From riffs on fairy tales, to tales of travelers seeking a library hidden in a desert oasis, to my current series, in my stories I explored what a world could look like with an abundance of magic.

And with each story I found myself most intrigued by the quieter uses of magic.

The spells in my stories warmed boots, provided a bobbing light for the overeager reader trying to read one last chapter, or put up the groceries for a weary shopper. I found joy in writing about enchantments that made tea kettles bubble with daydreams or devising cocktails that made a drinker recall their greatest regrets. The magic in my stories didn’t include epic quests and battles, and if there were curses, they probably had more in common with jinxes and weren’t nearly as difficult to untangle.

Everyday magic, is the word I like to use for it. Such magic is small spells and charms, that are simple enough for anyone to use and often have many different uses. In contrast to Grand magic which are spells that only a few can ever learn because they are dangerous, and just do one thing really well and nothing else.

Magic that’s in the background, in my opinion, is more useful than Grand spells that could remake the world. (After all what’s the use of a sword that’s only good for slaying the Undead Evil Lord, when the rest of the time it’s just there collecting dust in a corner?) Grand magic is clunky and troublesome, and can be like using a blowtorch when a pair of scissors is all that is needed. You ruin everything and don’t accomplish what you needed to do in the first place. It’s also very straight forward as the magic leaves little wiggle for variation or adjustment without catastrophe. And if a writer isn’t careful, duels involving magic can easily devolve into “wizards flinging balls of magical energy at each other.”

Magics with a smaller scale, leaves room for exploration. It can even allow you to be clever and to think hard of how it animates objects, impacts the environment, creates illusions, or even transforms an unruly apprentice into a fox. Most importantly, Everyday magic are the spells and enchantments that everyone can use, instead of magic being restricted to few learned scholars (or even forbidden).

Everyday magic allows a prankster to have fun, a child could get even on the bully, let’s an overworked city employee easily transform a park, and have new parents be assured their baby in snug in their crib.

It’s also the sort of magic perfect for solving mysteries.

The world of The Starseekers, runs on Everyday magic. I filled the pages with magic that creates staircases out of books, enchant inks and cards, brings unexpected utility to a compass, lends protection spells to bracelets, and even store up several useful spells in parasols. There is an air of whimsy to Everyday magic, giving me flexibility to have it suit my needs. Magic seeps into the surroundings, informing how characters move through the world and how they think about their acts. It allows me to consider the magical solutions to get astronauts to the Moon, how a museum may catalogue their collection of magical artifacts, or what laws on wands and broomsticks might arise and if those laws are just or not.

Embracing Everyday magic is what made The Starseekers possible, because making the everyday extraordinary is one of the many things I aim for as a writer and a lover of magic.

The Starseekers: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Books-a-Million|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky|Threads

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/06/the-big-idea-nicole-glover/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59030

jazzyjj in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

chacusha in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

conuly

Watch on YouTube

Profile

Katarina Whimsy

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

Style Credit

Style: Atomic Orange for Funky Circles by ninetydegrees
Resources: Stuck in Tokyo

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jan. 7th, 2026 12:47 am

People I enjoy!

Network

One more?

Yaybahar III Nadiri [music]

No bedbugs, and thoughts on how Buffy/Angel talked about sex

Dept. of Checking Something

This made me laugh

Faith in tbe future

Science

Dept. of Remembering the Truth

Unexpected connections

Birdfeeding

Snowflake challenge, day 3

Books read, December

Three bits of note

Nature diary

Write Every day 2026: January, Day 6

Haiku

The Big Idea: Nicole Glover

Just one thing: 6 January 2026

Quodo Mini-fest VI - sign-ups open!

(no subject)

Profile

January 2026

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags