Speaking of Venice Beach being a retirement village for urban fantasy protagonists, something pretty funny happened last Sunday. 
 
 
So, Titian and I had our jewelry sales booth parked next to two magical practitioners who we both know: N the energy healer, a very kind older Eastern European man who does chakra work, a straightforward sweetness and light Christian. Then there was T, who is interesting, he sells magical potions and powders, and does a kind of otherkin pop culture homebrew prophetic sorcery... and is also very Christian. In an eccentric way, but he's got a Bible right there next to the Key of Solomon. Then us. 
 
And this evangelical dude turns up to argue with N, of all people, and tell him he's going to hell. And dude does at least actually read his own religious text, at least, so he's admonishing N with Bible quotes. 
 
So N is talking back to him, holding his own, peacefully. All of us are watching, of course, because N is an absolute cinnamon roll and I think if someone hurt him they'd bring down the wrath of every other van dweller who isn't as pacifist as he is. I have a megaphone in our merch bag and if he looks more than mildly impatient at any point I'm gonna use it.

And then T steps in and gets the evangelical dude's attention. Dude moves over to T's booth and they get in an enthusiastic scriptural argument.

While all this is happening, the homeless guy who hangs out at our booth, who is also one of the most powerful practitioners on the beach if it's one of his better days, chimes in to talk about the archangel he channels, because, babe, this is Venice Beach, it was never not gonna get weirder.
 
And evangelical dude finally gets tired of being outclassed and moves on....

Then takes one look at our booth... Pride stickers, pentacles, interfaith esoterica, mushrooms, eyes... My femboy-looking ass behind the table in rainbow eye makeup...

We didn't bring the T-shirts that day, sadly, because I'm curious how he would've reacted to IF GOD GIVES ME A MANSION I PROMISE TO USE IT FOR EVIL SEX. But the vibes are enough. He gives up and walks away without saying a word. (That said, I won't take too much credit; T is a man of strong conviction and charismatic presence. I can't imagine wanting to get back in the ring for anything substantial after a religious argument with him.) 
 
I was a little disappointed, I was going to greet him like, "Hi, congratulations, you've finally found the heretics! Test your faith looking on our gay shit!"

At one point during all this I turned to Titian and said "This is what it must have been like at the first ecumenical councils", to which she agreed. Pure exegetic chaos.
 
Hilarious exegetic chaos, because even if the evangelical guy was a total killjoy, it's pure comedy that he skipped the atheists and Satanists twenty feet away and found a stretch of beach inhabited by a bunch of wizards who do actually earnestly believe in Jesus, in one way or another*, and have thought out their beliefs at some length.  

*Myself included; I just don't think Jesus' relationship to divinity was or is unique or non-replicable. This makes me a heretic in a lot of religions, which is even more fun than being a regular singly practicing heretic! 
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([personal profile] greghousesgf Feb. 4th, 2026 02:22 pm)
I went to North Berkeley today to get some fancy cheeses and baked goods for my birthday!
Well, I guess the gubmint is turned back on. Anyway, I read some things over the last seven days.

What I Finished Reading This Week

The U.S.-Indonesia Security Relationship – John Haseman & Eduardo Lachica
I knocked this out over the course of a day as part of an effort to read and release more perennial shelf-sitters this year. The U.S.-Indonesia Security Relationship was published in 2009 and is generally informative, although padded and sloppily edited in places, particularly toward the end ("The Indonesia until it recovers its purchasing power" reads a one such example sentence. No, it doesn't make more sense in context.) In general, it's pretty interesting to see which of the authors' predictions, recommendations, and concerns have come to pass 17 years lateromghowisitpossiblethatthisbookandtheworldandIareall17yearsolder😭😭😭😭

The Bone Chests - Cat Jarman
The Bone Chests reuses the structure Jarman employed to great effect in River Gods: she uses a historical artifact(s)—in this case, 10 wooden chests filled with human bones in Winchester Cathedral—as a jumping-off point to examine the history of a pre-modern ethnic group in England (the Anglo-Saxons in this case). I enjoyed River Kings very much, but enjoyed The Bone Chests well enough. Part of this is to do with the fact that, unlike the previous volume, scientific work on The Bone Chests's framing artifacts hadn't finished at the time of publication; the subtitle promises to "unlock the secrets of the Anglo-Saxons" but the book's conclusion is essentially an unsatisfying "watch this space". Part of it is because The Bone Chests focuses primarily on a small number of elites: a bunch of kings, some clergymen, and a scant few queens, where River Gods dealt more heavily with the everyday people whose lives I find more interesting. And as plenty has already been written on Anglo-Saxon kings and clergy, there's not as much that's new in The Bone Chests, or that distinguishes it from those other volumes. The end result is that the parts of this volume I found most interesting were the ones discussing the Scandinavians and Normans and how their societies influenced Anglo-Saxon dynastic politics, not the Anglo-Saxons themselves. I fully acknowledge that these things are, if not Me Problems, certainly Me Preferences. But Jarman's writing is as effortless and engaging as in her previous volume, and people who are interested in the book's actual focus will find much to enjoy here.

The Scottish Cookbook – Coinneach MacLeod
What can I say? If you like all the elements of the first three cookbooks (gorgeous photographs of gorgeous food and gorgeous landscapes, artfully composed to suggest that electricity, plastics, and phones and computers don't exist in this universe; interstitial "highland life" chapters that mix humorous anecdotes with summaries of folklore from Carmina Gadelica and The Silver Bough; a mix of ridiculously sugary confections and (often ridiculously dairy-heavy) savory dishes) you will like this book too. I also get the feeling MacLeod has made an effort (for better or worse) to include more recipes that aren't as heavily reliant on main ingredients that are difficult to source outside of the UK. At any rate, we've already made several dishes out of this volume, they've been very rich and very good, and yeah. It's certainly more of the same, but the same is good stuff.

The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol. 1 – Xue Shan Fei Hu
This book was so much fun; exactly what I needed to be reading this week. Our premise is that the narrator awakes to find himself a drab-colored carp about to be turned into soup for the mute oldest son of the emperor by his primary wife—the eponymous tyrant of the title, only before internecine court politics have turned him from a prince into a bloodthirsty fiend. Of course there's a system, and of course it immediately starts spamming out prompts that have our piscine main character trying to endear himself to said proto-tyrant and attempting to save secondary characters from canon doom. It is the utter opposite of Kafkaesque and I love it for that: the main character is mildly bemused to find himself a fish but takes to it with aplomb; he's a bit intimidated by the prince but takes to him immediately too; and the prince is instantly calmed and fascinated with his new pet fish. It's so nice. And the recurring plot element? In which cut for spoilers. ) I am delighted by this first volume and will absolutely continue on to the next one.


What I Am Currently Reading

The Dog Stars – Peter Heller
Basically, I am hate reading at this point.

The Stations of the Sun - Ronald Hutton
I read the chapter on Candlemas.

Lake of Souls - Ann Leckie
I am not a big short story reader, but Leckie is an excellent author in any format and I am plowing through these.


What I’m Reading Next

I acquired Roberty Henryson's The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables (Seamus Heaney, trans.) this week.


これで以上です。
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kareila: a lady in glasses holding a stack of books (books)
([personal profile] kareila Feb. 4th, 2026 03:08 pm)
Someone that I follow posted a list of the Hugo award winners for Best Novel, so here is where I stand with those as of today.

I have read: 22 books )

I own a copy but have not yet read: 11 books )

I started but did not finish: 3 books )

I have not read: 38 books )

I feel pretty good about this representation, especially since I've read (and mostly enjoyed) the most recent winners for twelve years running, up to last year's which I just haven't gotten around to yet. But some of them I know I will never read, and that's okay.
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([personal profile] pauraque Feb. 4th, 2026 04:11 pm)
In 17th century West Africa, an immortal woman named Anyanwu encounters another immortal for the first time, a man named Doro. But while Anyanwu is a healer who uses her powers to help others, Doro is a brutal manipulator who has been gathering people with paranormal powers and attempting to breed a race of superhumans under his iron fist. Anyanwu is the only other immortal he has ever found, and he intends to use her as "breeding stock" to make more. The novel follows centuries of their power struggle after Doro takes Anyanwu to the New World, as she strives to protect those under Doro's control and he strives to bend her to his will.

This is the chronologically earliest novel in Butler's Patternist series, though it was the fourth to be published. I was assured by leading experts (i.e. book club friends) that this is a perfectly good entry point to the series, so I started here and do not actually know yet what happens next!

It's the kind of book where it's hard to sit down and think of what to write about it, because it has so many layers that are worth thinking about and talking about, and they're all woven together so tightly and effectively that I'm not sure where to start pulling threads to unravel everything the book does. Butler had a gift for writing stories that resonate deeply with real situations without being simplistic, didactic one-to-one mappings. The speculative narrative and the real world historical setting illuminate each other in complex ways, and all the while Butler never loses sight of the characters as people with their own specific hurts, flaws, and needs. She makes it look so easy.

spoilery thoughtsThe obvious comparison is to her stand-alone novel Kindred, published just the previous year, which had a contemporary Black American woman time-traveling to the era of slavery. Anyanwu also travels from a life of freedom to the New World under slavery. Against this backdrop, Doro acts as a master over "his people" in the eugenics program—and he definitely uses the phrase to indicate ownership, not kinship. His program isn't legal slavery, but it is inextricably entwined with it; sometimes Doro buys enslaved people who have the powers he's looking for, and if they wanted to leave, how could they? Even if Doro didn't catch them, they'd only be fleeing into a land where they'd be assumed to be runaway slaves. Anyanwu's powers are a match for Doro's, so saving herself is an option, but he controls the lives of everyone she knows and cares about. What this book shares most strongly with Kindred is a devastating portrayal of how people can be trapped into compliance with systems of oppression.

The book's religious themes are also complex. Anyanwu does not pray to gods, as she feels she has all the power she needs within herself, but she does not see herself as superior to other people either. Meanwhile, Doro shamelessly plays the part of a god over his people because it serves his purposes and he can get away with it. But not a loving god. Rather he reminds me of the way people will sometimes talk about the so-called "Old Testament God": bloodthirsty and hypercontrolling, demanding absolute obedience and destroying anyone who gets in his way. In which case his favorite son Isaac plays the corresponding supposed role of Jesus: the "good cop" son who draws Anyanwu into trying to appease his father. If this is a distorted image of Christian theology, well, distortion and misuse of Christian faith are certainly a deliberate theme in the book, as Anyanwu overtly calls out Christian enslavers for their hypocrisy.

On a deeper and unspoken level, the book comments on the thought processes underlying patriarchal power structures. Doro has the power to kill and he uses it to control others without a second thought; might makes right. Anyanwu could also use her powers to kill if she chose to, but it doesn't even occur to her. Instead she heals—but everything she has goes to other people, all her nurturing and self-sacrifice. She has total control over her own body's inner workings (while Doro doesn't even have his original body anymore!), and she uses herself as a scientific test subject to learn to heal wounds and diseases, suffering pain and injury so others can recover. She always puts others first, and the rightness of this is so ingrained in the assumptions of the characters that nobody ever questions it. Even when she escapes Doro temporarily, she keeps coming back to him, in part because she can't bring herself to leave others unprotected.

The fact that Doro and Anyanwu both have male and female bodies at different points in the story made me think about how patriarchy isn't defined by anatomy, but by power dynamics. I would not describe either of them as trans characters, but there is a trans resonance with the way Anyanwu remains confident in her womanhood regardless of her physical form, and in the many ways she remains vulnerable to misogyny even when people who don't know her read her as a man.

The bond between Anyanwu and Doro is both twisted and deeply understandable. They're the only two immortals; everyone else they know grows old and dies. They're lonely. Doro wants someone like him, but he can't get that by force, much as he has been trying. Anyanwu's well of empathy seems boundless, but somehow excludes herself. Her threat of suicide makes sense as it's the only way she can escape the cycle of returning to him again and again—she can't trust herself not to keep going back as long as she is like him. And the only way she can be unlike him, as she sees it, is to sacrifice her immortality and die.

The book's protagonist is a healer, and I think one of the book's core questions is who deserves healing, and who is too far gone to ever be healed. Doro tries to punish Anyanwu by forcing her to bear a child by Thomas, an uncontrolled psychic who is so deep in addiction and depression that he has become physically repellent. To Doro's surprise, Anyanwu responds with empathy (her greatest superpower, I think) and begins to heal Thomas's physical and mental wounds. Doro's reaction—to murder Thomas and possess his body—is the moment when he tells on himself the most. He intends to show power and cruelty, and he does, but he also reveals himself as a desperately isolated person who yearns to be healed, to be transformed from something repulsive into someone loveable. The book has the courage to leave it less than settled how possible that really is for him.

So, I guess I'll be continuing this series! I have been warned that not all of the books in it are this good. I'm sure I will cope somehow.
merrileemakes: A very tired looking orange cat peering sleepily at you while curled up on a laptop bag (Default)
([personal profile] merrileemakes posting in [community profile] common_nature Feb. 5th, 2026 07:08 am)
Hi [community profile] common_nature, [profile] stonpicnicking_okapi shared their love of this comm as part of February Love Fest and inspired me to join. :)

I have been experiencing nature up close and personal thanks to some frogs. At the end of November, following a rain storm, my Partner and I could hear a frog in our tiny, ornamental garden pond/water feature. We're always so thrilled when this happens!

The next morning when I walked past the pond I saw a pile of bubbles and thought that was cool. The male frog has been making a bubble nest, like a betta fish, pining for a female to come join him (spoiler: I don't know much about frogs).

The next day I went to clean the pond (a bi-weekly feat during summer) and noticed that only only had the bubbles persisted, but some of them had developed little black dots. Oh my god, they're not bubbles they're eggs!
Life, uh, finds a way )

This Sunday evening, February 8, two football teams will be playing in Super Bowl LX. I’m not going to argue that you should care or even like NFL football, but I want to suggest two reasons to respect the sport.

1. Play. If you watch the game, you will see the players giving 100 percent to something that they love to do. It’s called playing the game for a reason. How often do we get to watch people working hard and doing their best with exhilaration?

This is true of all sports, of course, and performing arts, and a lot of other professions. Teaching a classroom requires just as much skill and concentrated devotion, and it deserves just as much hype. It’s rarely televised, though. So, rather than cheering as a teacher proficiently fields a surprise question and turns it into a revelation for the class, you can watch a quarterback dodge a sack and complete a long pass. Enjoy the metaphor — and imagine if teachers, staff, and students could come to school every day with the same celebration as taking the field at the Super Bowl.

2. Controlled violence. Football is a brutal, violent sport by design, but it is controlled violence. Players and non-player personnel must obey eight dense pages of regulations regarding their conduct in the NFL Rulebook, which forbids moves that could injure another player, unnecessary roughness, late hits, kicking, tripping, unsportsmanlike conduct, taunting, and violent gestures. The offender’s team can be punished with penalties like the loss of yardage, and the individual can be thrown out of the game.

Players must and can control themselves on the football field. No excuses. This lesson doesn’t always make it off the field and into the minds of fans, but it should. Violence is a deliberate choice. Football shows us how to choose wisely even in moments of extreme emotion.

What I read

Finished The Doxies Penalty - I wonder where my copies of the first two in the sequence have got to? should like to revisit.

Kent Haruf, Plainsong (1999) - I think I mentioned when reading another work by Haruf that I had been intrigued by an essay in a collection by Ursula Le Guin about his novels, so I was looking out for these at 'taking a punt' prices. I feel that, um, admire the writing, the subtle subdued effects etc etc etc but not impelled to rush out and acquire everything he ever wrote.

For a massive change of pace, Megan Abbott, El Dorado Drive (2025) which was good if grim noirish about sisters who were brought up in comfort and then the economy crashed, getting caught up in a rather creepy pyramid-type scheme.

Then another change of pace, Julia Quinn, Romancing Mister Bridgerton (Bridgertons, #4) (2004) as it was on Kobo promotion and I felt maybe I should given these a whirl, but not massively taken. Kind of slow.

Then yet another Dick Francis, Decider (1993), pretty good, even if we have yet another dysfunctional privileged family (this one owns, or at least, is in the process of inheriting, a racecourse), at least one of whom is a raging psychopath. The competence-porn in this one involves architecture, in particular restoration of ruined buildings, with a side-trip to erecting a big top and how circuses deal with potential fires etc (plot-relevant).

On the go

Somebody somewhere some while ago was mentioning Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale (1930), which I literally read in my schooldays and never since, and had it mentally on a list to look at again, so downloaded it from The Faded Page and am well stuck in. Love Our Narrator being bitchy about Literary Circles, not so much enthralled by the actual plot.

Up next

Dunno. It's that time of year when I really have no idea what I want to read. Maybe that book about the Bigfoot Community?

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([personal profile] silversea posting in [community profile] booknook Feb. 4th, 2026 01:21 pm)
It's Wednesday! Are you reading anything?
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([personal profile] lsanderson Feb. 4th, 2026 11:56 am)
ICE

As Minnesota legislative session nears and Operation Metro Surge drags on, lawmakers ready response to ICE
Minnesota DFLers are considering laws similar to ones that passed in other blue states. But they are still likely to see legal (and Republican) scrutiny.
by Cleo Krejci and Matthew Blake
https://www.minnpost.com/state-government/2026/02/as-minnesota-legislative-session-nears-and-operation-metro-surge-drags-on-lawmakers-ready-response-to-ice/

Trump’s border czar says 700 immigration officers to leave Minnesota immediately
About 2,000 officers will remain in the state after this week’s drawdown.
by Steve Karnowski, Associated Press
https://www.minnpost.com/metro/2026/02/trumps-border-czar-says-700-immigration-officers-to-leave-minnesota-immediately/

U.S. Rep. Kelly Morrison visited the Whipple Federal Building on Monday and described the conditions she observed in a video posted to YouTube, KARE 11 reports. “During my visit yesterday, I got confirmation that the facility has no specific medical policy and no real medical care on site. There was not a nurse present yesterday at all. There are no beds, no real blankets, minimal food, extremely cold temperatures. People are in locked cells with leg shackles.” Agents did not answer her questions about how many people are currently being held, and how many had been sent to the hospital over the past week. Via MinnPost
https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/ice-in-minnesota/no-real-medical-care-representative-describes-conditions-for-detainees-at-whipple-building/89-0995e964-97b1-4d52-97ac-20aaf3b043c5

On Tuesday U.S. citizens who have been affected by the federal immigration crackdown spoke at a public forum organized by Democratic lawmakers in Washington. Renee Macklin Good’s brothers were among the speakers. “[Another] was Aliya Rahman of Minneapolis, who was dragged out of her car by federal immigration enforcement agents three weeks ago. Rahman said she is autistic and has a traumatic brain injury.” Rahman also described conditions at Whipple. “I saw Black and brown bodies shackled together, chained together, being marched by yelling agents outdoors. I continue to hear the word ‘bodies’ because that is how agents refer to us.” Via MinnPost
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/02/04/renee-macklin-goods-brothers-others-call-for-ice-reforms-at-public-forum Read more... )

Posted by Rafael Alanis

2 Min Read

NASA’s SPHEREx Examines Comet 3I/ATLAS’s Coma

These observations by NASA’s SPHEREx show the infrared light emitted by the dust, water, organic molecules, and carbon dioxide contained within comet 3I/ATLAS’s coma during the mission’s December 2025 campaign.
PIA26720
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Description

These observations by NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) show the infrared light emitted by the dust, water, organic molecules, and carbon dioxide contained within comet 3I/ATLAS’s coma. The comet brightened significantly during the December 2025 period when SPHEREx made the observations — about two months after the icy body had passed its closest distance to the Sun in late October.

The space telescope has the singular capability of seeing the sky in 102 colors, each representing a wavelength of infrared light that provides unique information about galaxies, stars, planet-forming regions, or other cosmic features, including the various gases and dust seen in the coma of 3I/ATLAS. The information gathered by SPHEREx helps scientists better understand what materials 3I/ATLAS contains and how the interstellar object’s pristine ices react to the Sun’s heating as the comet journeys through the solar system.

The mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The telescope and the spacecraft bus were built by BAE Systems. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data is being conducted by a team of scientists at 13 institutions across the U.S., and in South Korea and Taiwan, led by Principal Investigator Jamie Bock, based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment, and by JPL Project Scientist Olivier Dore. Data is processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, which manages JPL for NASA. The SPHEREx dataset is freely available to scientists and the public.

For more information about the SPHEREx mission visit: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/

The post NASA’s SPHEREx Examines Comet 3I/ATLAS’s Coma appeared first on NASA Science.

([syndicated profile] cakewrecks_feed Feb. 4th, 2026 02:00 pm)

Posted by Jen

Bride-to-be Coley got engaged in Hershey Park, so for her bridal shower her friends thought it would be fun to have a giant Hershey Kiss cake. Cool idea, right? Especially since, as far as shaped cakes go, a kiss shouldn't be that hard - I mean, it's not like it's a football helmet or anything.

In fact, while looking for a reference just now I found this one by Carrie of Half Baked. It's actually a cupcake, but c'mon: SO CUTE.

 

So just imagine this, only bigger. That's what they wanted for Coley's shower.

Instead, Coley's sister Tammy sent me a picture of what they did get, along with many emphatic assurances that yes, they actually paid for it (though "only" about $60), and yes, it was made by an actual "cake decorator" - though I should note she did put that part in quotes.

The cake was wrapped in tinfoil, a brilliant move on the "decorator's" part if ever I saw one, since that way no one saw the cake's true glory until it came time to serve it at the party.

At which point they unwrapped it to reveal...

 

 

....this:

 

Um...

 Ok, call me crazy, but is that top reminding anyone else of those creepy weed guys in Ursula's lair?

No? Just me?

Ok then.

 

Thanks to Tammy and Coley for the kiss and tell.

*****

P.S. My "related searches" kind of got away from me today, but I think you'll approve:

"Hiss" Punny Cats Parody T-Shirt

Lots more colors and shirt styles available at the link.

*****

And from my other blog, Epbot:

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([personal profile] amberite Feb. 4th, 2026 02:21 am)
You can buy Kirkland Signature paper towels on Temu from a "local vendor", presumably someone drop-shipping them from Costco. They cost about $10 more than the regular price but if you manage to get on the rolling credit deal you only pay for about 10-15% of your whole purchase amount - as long as you don't mess up on claiming the rebate. So next time we're out of paper towels I may get to pay about $4 actual cost. 

The Chinese government is probably subsidizing this purchase from a US middleman to a US buyer, of which most of the price goes into Costco's pocket, since I can't imagine a shoplifting ring going after these packages. (They're volumetrically about the size of my partner, a small adult human. I can barely wrestle them into the shopping cart when I go to Costco in person.) 

Weird time to be alive!

Another seller has a 1.75 oz jar of Maison F Crayssac truffle caviar (list price $25) going for $100. I admire the chutzpah. It'd only be about $12 actual cost after everything averaged out, but I have a tiny jar of potent truffle aioli that I got for $2 at Grocery Outlet and it is already as much truffle as I need in my life. 

Do be aware, not every deal is good at the end of the day, occasionally you will be sent the stupidest substitutions so never rely on a Temu order for a time-sensitive need, and actually "winning the game" takes being thoughtful and methodical. 
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([personal profile] oursin Feb. 4th, 2026 09:43 am)
Happy birthday, [personal profile] aquila1nz and [personal profile] wychwood!
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