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A rough pencil and watercolor of the confrontation that I saw ages ago between an old woman with her walker and a truck at an intersection. I made it bit political - to get across a statement. Two actually. It's not perfect, kind of rough.

( watercolor and pencil )

Bruce Springsteen has released a new single on the Minneapolis protests.

Streets of Minneapolis

And Lady Gaga released a new cover of Won't You Be My Neighbor

And they've been singing and chanting Holiday by Green Day - and Green Day performed American Idiot and Holiday for Minnesota. [I love Green Day].

ysabetwordsmith posting in

goals_on_dw

Go Further Together

When you set a goal it’s best to buddy up! Rely on friends, or a community of people, to stay motivated and help you become your best self. Friends and networks, especially healthy ones, are good for motivation and accountability. Here are some practical tips for finding these people -– both near and far –- to help you achieve your goals.

Current Mood: busy

questionable_content_feed

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5754

brickhousewench

I don't know what possessed me, but I took a look at houses in Lowell on Zillow tonight.

I found one rather nice house in my price range. Then checked the map, and it's withing smelling distance of the town sewage plant. Which always smells rather pungent when I drive by, and is strong enough in the summer that I always close my car windows when I pass it. I can smell it just writing about it. No, I do not want to buy a house in a one block radius of that stench.

I found another home that looked nice, a 1950s vintage ranch. It's within a block of U Mass Lowell, so too close to campus to be a quiet neighborhood. I'm a good four miles away, and I'm still too close to campus.

And I looked at a townhome. Same size as my condo, but it's nice and sunny because it's not underground. And the neighbors would be on either side of me, not over my head. And I would have access to a tiny back deck and a backyard. But it costs three times what I paid for my condo. For basically getting some sunlight and a little bit of grass with the same square footage.

* le sigh *

I don't know why I bothered looking.

settiai

ACNH had a free update two weeks ago that added some new features to the game, and I've got to admit that I'm quite enjoying them. Considering it's an almost six-year-old game, I'm still a little surprised that they released such a big update after all this time, but I'm very much not complaining.

They've added a hotel which means you can have more visitors to your island every day, and they're all wandering around instead of staying in one spot like visitors who are at the campsite do. The only thing that I'm disappointed about is that there doesn't appear to be any way to get hotel visitors to move to your island like with campsite visitors, which made me very sad when Raymond showed up a few days ago. That said, I've discovered that former residents of your island remember you and talk about coming back to their old home for a visit, which is amazing. I'd forgotten that a few of them even used to live on my island until I saw them again.

I've currently put over 1000 hours into this game, which I quite honestly find hilarious. The four Dragon Age games beat that, as I've put around 1500 hours into them, but the four Mass Effect games are only around 980 hours and Baldur's Gate 3 is only around 820 hours. So far, at least. The way I'm going, it may be in the 900s at least before my birthday next month.

Considering this was my very first Animal Crossing game, I really can't believe that it's second only to Dragon Age when it comes to my hours played. I only bought it because one of the players in my Friday night D&D game made an impassioned argument to convince us all to get it so that we could play together during the early days of the pandemic. Yet here I am, almost six years later, still playing it regularly.

Current Mood: amused

soc_puppet

I don't seem to have made a list of my acquisitions this year for either my birthday or Xmas! ...Perhaps it's because I was so spectacularly underwhelmed 😓

One cool thing that I got was a gift card for a month's full membership at a local, uh. Fabrication place?

Right. So. You know how a bunch of crafts can require specific, really complicated and expensive machinery that a given person may not have the room or money to buy for themselves? Well, this facility is dedicated to housing a lot of that machinery for use by local crafters. Things like woodworking stuff, sewing machines, ceramics wheels and a kiln, a 3D printer, etc.

Anyway, I finally got around to activating my membership and signing up for classes, and my first class is tonight! I wanted to take the ceramics intro class (required to use the ceramics space), but those have been booked up for a while, so I've been out of luck. I did at least find some classes that interest me, and I look forward to learning more stuff for when I might extend my membership in the future.

First class: "Basic Jewelry Hand Tools"
Upcoming classes: "Basic 3D Printing", "Basic Cricut", "Basic Electronics", and "Basic Sewing Machines".

Current Mood: creative

sovay

In the midst of this week, we are in a block of doctor's appointments, but following this afternoon's I climbed up to the railings behind the Salem Street Burying Ground and hung over them with my camera, an operation which still put me in snow to mid-calf. Its winter-drifted gravestones date from the late seventeenth through the late nineteenth centuries, with one modern interpolation for the unmarked, enslaved dead. I should go back for their slate-carved winged skulls in spring.

The current sunset is one of those violet riots, but at the time of this photo, the clouds above the fan of trees were just starting to flush gilt-grey. That attenuated stretch of the Mystic that always looks more like an industrial canal than a river was a glaucous freeze at its margins and flat-skimmed snow down its center. I cannot believe I never encountered Socalled's Ghettoblaster (2006) until its twentieth anniversary. Then again, only forty years after the fact did it occur to me that I would have accepted The Last Battle (1956) much more readily if Lewis had made it Ragnarök instead of Revelations.

Current Music: Mitski, "Where's My Phone?"

kaberett

The second attempt at a present for my mother has arrived Several Whole Days before I am next going to see her! Hurrah! (About ten days after I'd received a notification that the previous attempt was ready to ship, and I'd be hearing more from the courier Drekly, I... realised I had heard nothing more from the courier. Apparently the parcel evaporated, but the company sent the order back to the workshop as a priority job...)
I successfully exchanged blood for a bowel prep kit! The blood results have not yet shown up in the NHS app, but fingers crossed for them coming through... drekly.
Allotment! Post-bloods I took myself to the plot to empty the compost pail, and accidentally did a whole pile of weeding, thereby establishing that the garlic chives have overwintered successfully (thus far) even if they're looking a bit bedraggled; that I do in fact have a lot of garlic I failed to harvest last year that's coming up merrily now (which I am contemplating redistributing in aid of maybe getting bigger bulbs out of it...); and that there are going to be So Many Beetroot. (Largely self-seeded.) (I did accidentally eat some of the garlic chives, Contra Bowel Prep Instructions, because apparently I Ought Not Be Trusted At The Allotment when I'm on a low-residue diet, BUT I successfully did NOT eat ANY of the spinach or rocket or lamb's lettuce.)
I consolidated enough of my Book Piles to unearth the coffee table! AND THUS we have begun a puzzle, which I am greatly enjoying.
Tinned pears. Tinned pears are always a Treat that is a Small Luxury, and they are especially so this week. ...it is possible that I am going to go through my entire stash.

casemod posting in

fandomcalendar

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

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3200/

Some of the atoms in the molecule are very weakly bound.

https://xkcd.com/3200/

otw_news_feed

Posted by Caitlynne

https://www.transformativeworks.org/otw-signal-january-2026/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=277270

Every month in OTW Signal, we take a look at stories that connect to the OTW’s mission and projects, including issues related to legal matters, technology, academia, fannish history and preservation issues of fandom, fan culture, and transformative works.

In the News

As part of Copyright Week 2026, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) highlighted a broken aspect of U.S. copyright law: statutory damages. These are fines imposed on platforms and users for copyright infringement, and because there is little guidance on how to calculate them, they can far exceed the amount of actual financial harm—up to $150,000 per work. For the many internet users whose online presence relies on re-use, this creates steep risk and encourages online censorship.

Massive, unpredictable damages awards for copyright infringement, such as a $222,000 penalty for sharing 24 music tracks online, are the fuel that drives overzealous or downright abusive takedowns of creative material from online platforms. Capricious and error-prone copyright enforcement bots, like YouTube’s Content ID, were created in part to avoid the threat of massive statutory damages against the platform. Those same damages create an ever-present bias in favor of major rightsholders and against innocent users in the platforms’ enforcement decisions. And they stop platforms from addressing the serious problems of careless and downright abusive copyright takedowns. […]

“But wait”, you might say, “don’t legal protections like fair use and the safe harbors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protect users and platforms?” They do—but the threat of statutory damages makes that protection brittle. Fair use allows for many important re-uses of copyrighted works without permission. But fair use … can sometimes be difficult to predict when copyright is applied to new uses. Even well-intentioned and well-resourced users avoid experimenting at the boundaries of fair use when the cost of a court disagreeing is so high and unpredictable.

The EFF proposes a fairer system: limit statutory damages to a multiple of harm or eliminate them altogether in cases of good-faith fair use.

The EFF has a long history of tackling problems in U.S. copyright law. In 2008, with support from the OTW, the EFF petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office for an exemption to the DMCA’s anticircumvention provisions in order to allow noncommercial remix artists, such as vidders, to break DVD encryption for the purpose of obtaining short, high quality clips for inclusion in noncommercial remix videos. The EFF and the OTW, along with New Media Rights, continue to file renewal petitions to keep this exemption active.

The OTW received a request from an Advanced Placement high school student who is conducting a study about the effects of fanfiction and fandom on interpersonal development. To take part in this study, fans can answer a survey about the fandoms they are involved in, the fanfiction they read, and their experiences interacting with other fans. For more information, please visit the survey link above.

This study is being conducted as part of the Advanced Placement Capstone Diploma Program and is being supervised by Stephen Westbrook. Questions about this study can be directed to Stephen Westbrook.

AO3 and the OTW are not endorsing this project, but we are signal-boosting this link for informational purposes.

OTW Tips

International Fanworks Day (IFD) is just around the corner on February 15th! This year’s theme is Alternate Universes (AU), and we’d love to hear from you—what are your favorite AUs, your go-to AU categories, or treasured headcanons? Tag your posts with #IFD2026, and we may signal-boost them on our OTW social media accounts!

P.S. Today (January 28th) is the last day to let us know about any events you’ll be running in your community for this IFD! You can submit your events through this form.

We want your suggestions for the next OTW Signal post! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or news story you think we should know about, send us a link. We are looking for content in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in an OTW post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/otw-signal-january-2026/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=277270

starspray

Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: T
Characters: Sons of Feanor, Elrond, Feanor, Daeron, various others
Warnings: n/a
Summary: After years in Lórien, Maglor and Maedhros are ready to return to their family and to make something new with their lives--but to move forward, all of Fëanor's sons must decide how, or if, they can ever reconcile with their father.
Note: This fic is a direct sequel to High in the Clean Blue Air.

Prologue / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

( Read more... )

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: The Kids Aren't All Right - Fall Out Boy

badly_knitted

Title: Older
Fandom: BtVS
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Buffy, Angel.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 486: Feeling Blue at

drabble_zone.
Spoilers/Setting: Surprise / Innocence.
Summary: Buffy turns seventeen. So much for a happy birthday.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters.
A/N: Double drabble.

( Older... )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

badly_knitted

Title: Eager Recruits
Fandom: FAKE
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo, OCs.
Rating: PG
Setting: Years after Like Like Love.
Summary: Dee and Ryo get their first look at their latest academy cadets.
Written Using: The dw100 prompt ‘Zeal’.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
A/N: Double drabble and a half, 250 words.

( Eager Recruits... )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

badly_knitted

Title: A Stiff Drink
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 902: Shot, at

torchwood100.
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Alcohol isn’t a cure-all, but sometimes it helps.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Double drabble.

( A Stiff Drink... )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

lb_lee

Rogan: well! That was exciting and awful!

I took NyQuil because I badly wanted a nap and to be able to breathe. What I got was twenty-four hours (and counting) of badness.

( Read more... )

The NyQuil has mercifully mostly worn off now, twenty-four hours later. I’m still moving carefully, but I’m not afraid to stand up and walk around the apartment. But for real, never taking this stuff again, what a horrible experience.

Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/10694.html

innitmarvellous

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

scrubjayspeaks

She collected extinct foods--not expired, thank you, though she recognized the natural overlap in the two categories--whose manufacturers had abandoned them as outdated relics or failed experiments. Her huge chest freezers and pantries contained foods in mint-condition packaging, sorted by date of last production, ranging from Squeezafroos (June 3, 1993) to canned Cream of Carp soup (February 25, 1904) to limited edition Forager Style Spam (September 12, 1938). With one bite, she would be transported by more than mere nostalgia to another age, somewhere along the timeline of each lost food, and she could wander as a gustatory time traveler for however long the taste lingered on her tongue.

---

LL#1362

fayanora

Refusing to take a polygraph test should be right up there with immediately lawyering up: the smart thing to do. Polygraphs are pseudoscience, and the guy who invented them was horrified when he learned police were using them to interrogate people. So yes, refuse to take a polygraph because they're bullshit.

Also, never talk to cops without your lawyer present because cops have no scruples, and they don't care about the truth, they only care about being seen to have caught the perp. "Even if I'm innocent?" ESPECIALLY if you're innocent! They can and will do everything they can get away with to make you say something that will incriminate you even if you are entirely innocent. Hell, there are multiple cases are people who were mentally disabled, including people with developmental disabilities ("mentally retarded" in the old language), who were convicted, sentenced, and even put to death for crimes they could not possibly have committed.

All these true crime content makers need to stop acting like refusing to take a polygraph test is anything other than a good idea. Same with people who lawyer up right away.

asakiyume

I've been reading Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo because it was our book group book. Usually I can take or leave (or prefer to leave) our book group books, but this one I expected I'd like, because I loved Acevedo's The Poet X (ended up teaching that one in the jail). And I am liking it! So much that although the book group date came and went, I've kept on reading it because I want to finish it.

It's about two generations of Dominican women, whose life stories we get in bits and pieces around the occasion of a living wake that one of them is throwing for herself. The characters, their lives, the language--it's all so vivid. I marked this, one woman (older generation) talking about her older sister:

The person I've hugged most in the world, beside my own offspring, has been Flor. It was she who carried me on her hip. As a child, hers was the first body I remember vining around, the way climbing plants claim homes.

Also, the women all have gifts. One has dreams that foretell when someone will die. Another can tell if someone is lying. Another can salsa like nobody's business. And one has an alpha vagina ;-)

( cut for frank talk about down-there )

I've been surprised and delighted by how much I'm enjoying this character's thoughts and experiences with her gift. The book is overall super sensual and VERY sex positive.

I'm also still reading and enjoying Breath, Warmth, and Dream, by Zig Zag Claybourne, but I had to put it aside to read this one. But this one is nearly done, and Breath, Warmth, and Dream is very easy to fall back into.

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fuzzyred

February 2026

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Page Summary

shadowkat - And we pause from our regularly scheduled programming for a bit of artistic protesting...
ysabetwordsmith in goals_on_dw - Go Further Together
questionable_content_feed - Speech Therapy
brickhousewench - I don't know what possessed me
settiai - Animal Crossing: New Horizons
soc_puppet - Creative classes!
sovay - I'll stay out until my mind is like a clear glass
kaberett - some good things
casemod in fandomcalendar - [MULTIFANDOM] CASEFIC EXCHANGE: Sign-ups are open!
xkcd_feed - Chemical Formula
otw_news_feed - OTW Signal, January 2026
starspray - A Hundred Miles Through the Desert - Chapter Forty Six
badly_knitted - BtVS Double Drabble: Older
badly_knitted - FAKE Double Drabble: Eager Recruits
badly_knitted - Double Drabble: A Stiff Drink
lb_lee - NyQuil Adventures with Peter Ibbetson
innitmarvellous - This and that...
scrubjayspeaks - Lake Lewisia #1362
fayanora - Polygraphs
asakiyume - Reading Wednesday

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Fuzzyred's Marvelous Reading Nook

Come cuddle with me

Network

And we pause from our regularly scheduled programming for a bit of artistic protesting...

Go Further Together

Speech Therapy

I don't know what possessed me

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Creative classes!

I'll stay out until my mind is like a clear glass

some good things

[MULTIFANDOM] CASEFIC EXCHANGE: Sign-ups are open!

Chemical Formula

OTW Signal, January 2026

In the News

OTW Tips

A Hundred Miles Through the Desert - Chapter Forty Six

BtVS Double Drabble: Older

FAKE Double Drabble: Eager Recruits

Double Drabble: A Stiff Drink

NyQuil Adventures with Peter Ibbetson

This and that...

Lake Lewisia #1362

Polygraphs

Reading Wednesday

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February 2026

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