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every exit an entrance somewhere else (1611 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Rosencrantz (Hamlet), Guildenstern (Hamlet), Tom Stoppard
Additional Tags: Meta, Death
Summary:

Death, a boat, et cetera.

*

Beautifully sums up what might well have happened to the spirit of Tom Stoppard posthumously. Made me cry.

Current Mood: weepy
Current Music: I'm only good in support

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Current Mood: okay
Current Music: "Winter" ~ Phil Perry

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memes: random

In 2025 I posted reviews of 51 books, of which 8 were re-reads, 5 were revisions of old reviews, and 38 were books I read for the first time this year.

( and here they are )

This brought me up to 11 novels and two short story collections in my chronological Le Guin project. Have I made much of a dent? Well, her website says she produced "23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation" so I have certainly taken a big bite out of the novels even though I'm only up to 1976. I don't think I realized how novel-heavy her early career was. I am not planning to read all the poetry (I'll probably do some) and the only translation I'll be looking at is her Tao Te Ching. And yet, even when I sketch out a planned posting schedule that assumes I'll be grouping some of the picture books together, it still comes out as three more years and I don't know how that's possible. Stay tuned to find out if she really wrote as many things as I think she did, or if I just can't read a calendar.

At the end of last year my TBR list had 180 books on it, and my goal was for that number to go down. Which it did. By three. It's not that I wasn't reading things from the list, it's that I kept adding more. I decided to do a big cull, mostly of books that had been on there for way too long and I couldn't honestly say I was interested anymore. Now it's down to 140.

Of the books I read for the first time this year, my favorites include: The Backyard Bird Chronicles, The Spear Cuts Through Water, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Only Good Indians, and Convenience Store Woman.

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I used to do these more regularly, back in the LJ and early DW days when a lot of people used to do end-of-year lists of their fic in case you'd missed anything, before so much of it was consolidated on AO3. I never really was that organized about it, but over time my (slightly chaotic) end-of-year fandom posts were taken over by my origfic roundup posts, and I stopped doing them entirely. But as this is my 20th (or so) year in LJ/DW fandom, perhaps this is a good time to start doing them again, especially since this was a very exciting and interesting year for me! (I also did a year-end roundup meme over on Tumblr, which is where some of this was originally consolidated.)

I'm still in Biggles, but I also got into three, count 'em, 3 new fandoms, although none of them were entirely new to me:

MASH: rewatch of a show I watched a lot as a kid, but hadn't actually seen again as an adult (except a scattered episode here and there). I didn't expect it to grab me fannishly, but that's what I get for guessing. I've drifted out again now, I think, but it was a good time and a really delightful nostalgia rush.

Babylon 5: watched about two and a half seasons back in the 90s, always meant to go back and finish it before I got completely spoiled, fell as hard as I always suspected I would.

Murderbot: read the first book years ago, didn't really vibe with it, turned out to love the show.

I posted 215,777 words of fic on AO3 according to their stats. (My personal accounting is 296,200, which includes all the promptfic and unfinished fics.) This is way up from the last couple of years, and I'm also starting to write longer fic again - everything I posted in 2023-24 was under 10K.

I started making vids again, and posted 3 (2 MASH as treats for last year's Festivids, 1 for Murderbot).

In general, I started being able to "do" visual media again last winter. I hadn't really been watching anything for the past couple of years, or watching vids, or really doing much of anything in a visual medium. Last winter I bought a tablet (Black Friday sale) that I planned to use for media watching, and it did in fact work out very well for that! I wanted it at least partly as a distraction from IRL, which has really been A Lot - not even speaking about world events, but just me personally. My stepdad died in January, and I've spent this past year traveling back and forth between my mom's place and here, helping her adjust. And then I got back into actual travel this fall, with a trip to England and then most recently Hawaii for the holidays. So it's been nice to have visual media as a kind of touchstone to anchor me by. I also read a lot.

I'm coming off a bad couple of years, in fandom and overall - I burned out, I lost some friends, I was kind of hard to deal with in general, I think. But this year has felt much better to me. I've been having an amazing time with my new shiny things, I'm creatively active and excited about writing in a way that I haven't really felt in years, and I really like a lot of what I wrote this year. There have still been ups and downs even with that, of course - I have *got* to get back in the habit of editing more before I post things, I know I'll be happier with it. But all in all, I like where things are for me now.

I honestly kind of hope I don't get into anything new in 2026, at least not right away, because I'm really happy with my current fandoms and I have lots more to "say" about them in fic, I feel!

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year-end fandom roundup

Posted by Jennifer Ouellette

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/the-science-of-how-and-when-we-decide-to-speak-out-or-self-censor/

Freedom of speech is a foundational principle of healthy democracies and hence a primary target for aspiring authoritarians, who typically try to squash dissent. There is a point where the threat from authorities is sufficiently severe that a population will self-censor rather than risk punishment. Social media has complicated matters, blurring traditional boundaries between public and private speech, while new technologies such as facial recognition and moderation algorithms give authoritarians powerful new tools.

Researchers explored the nuanced dynamics of how people balance their desire to speak out vs their fear of punishment in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors had previously worked together on a model of political polarization, a project that wrapped up right around the time the social media space was experiencing significant changes in the ways different platforms were handling moderation. Some adopted a decidedly hands-off approach with little to no moderation. Weibo, on the other hand, began releasing the IP addresses of people who posted objectionable commentary, essentially making them targets.

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https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/the-science-of-how-and-when-we-decide-to-speak-out-or-self-censor/

Posted by John Timmer

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/feds-researchers-settle-suit-over-grants-blocked-by-now-illegal-order/

On Monday, the ACLU announced that it and other organizations representing medical researchers had reached a settlement in their suit against the federal government over grant applications that had been rejected under a policy that has since been voided by the court. The agreement, which still has to be approved by the judge overseeing the case, would see the National Institutes of Health restart reviews of grants that had been blocked on ideological grounds. It doesn't guarantee those grants will ultimately be funded, but it does mean they will go through the standard peer review process.

The grants had previously been rejected without review because their content was ideologically opposed by the Trump administration. That policy has since been declared arbitrary and capricious, and thus in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, a decision that was upheld by the Supreme Court.

How'd we get here?

Immediately after taking office, the Trump Administration identified a number of categories of research, some of them extremely vague, that it would not be supporting: climate change, DEI, pandemic preparedness, gender ideology, and more. Shortly thereafter, federal agencies started cancelling grants that they deemed to contain elements of these disfavored topics, and blocking consideration of grant applications for the same reasons. As a result, grants were cancelled that funded everything from research into antiviral drugs to the incidence of prostate cancer in African Americans.

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https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/feds-researchers-settle-suit-over-grants-blocked-by-now-illegal-order/

Posted by Victor Mair

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72441&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=celto-sinica

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72441

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-seventy-third issue:

“Correspondences between Old Chinese and Proto-Celtic Words,” by Julie Lee Wei

ABSTRACT

This paper presents 150 pairs of Sinitic and Celtic words that bear a striking resemblance to each other in sound and meaning. Of the 150 Celtic words, 120 are Proto-Celtic words corresponding in sound and meaning to 120 Old Chinese words. The remaining thirty Celtic corresponding words are in such languages as Old Welsh, Old Irish, Brythonic, and Welsh. Two of the 150 Celtic words correspond to Modern Standard Mandarin words. Proto-Celtic covers the period circa 1300–800 bc. Old Chinese covers the period circa 1250 bc–220 ad. The oldest Chinese script, Oracle Bone and Shell Script (OB), covers the period circa 1250–1050 bc. In the list of 150 pairs of corresponding Chinese and Celtic words, some regular sound correspondences can be discerned, notably the correspondences of Proto-Celtic initial voiced labial velar approximant (*w- / *u-) to Old Chinese labialized velar, uvular, or glottal obstruents or nasals (*gw-/*gu-, *kw-/*ku-/*ko-, *ɢw-/ *ɢu-, *qu-, *qo-,*ŋw-, *hw-/*hu-/*ho-, ɦŋw-, ɦŋo-, or *ʔw–). Of the 120 Proto-Celtic words in the list of Proto-Celtic and Old Chinese corresponding pairs, thirty-five begin with the initials *w- or *u-. All except six of the 150 Chinese words in the list of correspondences are monosyllables. The remaining six Chinese words are bisyllables. Examples of the six are Mandarin 咳嗽 kesou “cough” (Proto-Celtic *kwaso– “cough”) and Mandarin houlong 喉嚨 “throat” (Welsh llwng “throat”).

The findings of the paper include the correspondence of old Chinese 王 *ɢʷaŋ “king” (Modern Mandarin wang) with Proto-Celtic *walo- “prince, chief” (the same word as TocharianB walo “king”). The methodology for proposing the Chinese and Celtic correspondences is described in the paper.

—–
All issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are available in full for no charge.
To view our catalog, visit http://www.sino-platonic.org/

Selected readings

Victor H. Mair. "The Horse in Late Prehistoric China: Wresting Culture and Control from the 'Barbarians'." In Marsha Levine, Colin Renfrew and Katie Boyle, ed. Prehistoric steppe adaptation and the horse, McDonald Institute Monographs (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2003), pp. 163-187.
"Horse culture comes east" (11/15/20) — with a lengthy bibliography of archeological, linguistic, historic, etc. sources
"Of horse riding and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (4/21/19)
"Mare, mǎ ('horse'), etc." (11/17/19)
Once more on Sinitic *mraɣ and Celtic and Germanic *marko for 'horse'" (4/28/20)
"Some Mongolian words for 'horse'" (11/7/19)
"'Horse Master' in IE and in Sinitic" (11/9/19)
"Horses, soma, riddles, magi, and animal style art in southern China" (11/11/19)
"'Horse' and 'language' in Korean" (10/30/19)
"Archeological and linguistic evidence for the wheel in East Asia" (3/11/20)
"Equine excursions and explorations" (9/8/25)
“Horses and Humans: A Consequential Symbiosis,” edited by Victor H. Mair, SPP 365 (September, 2025)
"Of knots, pimples, and Sinitic reconstructions" (11/12/18)
"The origins and affinities of Tocharian" (8/20/23) — with lengthy bibliography and extensive comments from Tocharian specialists

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72441&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=celto-sinica

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72441

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Current Mood: chipper

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heated rivalry

[Podfic] Too close for comfort (23 words) by Flowerparrish Pods
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars - All Media Types
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Chewbacca/Han Solo
Characters: Chewbacca (Star Wars), Han Solo
Additional Tags: Drabble, Knotting, Podfic, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming
Series: Part 25 of Bite-Sized Podfics (2025)
Summary:

[Audio Length: 1:05]

Han and Chewie get intimate.

Podfic of Too close for comfort by Petra.

*

Thanks, Flowerparrish!

Current Mood: !
Current Music: Flowerparrish's dulcet tones

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( A List of All the Things )

Previous Years: 2024 + 2025

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fandom: doctor who

Posted by Ashley Belanger

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/doge-did-not-find-2t-in-fraud-but-that-doesnt-matter-musk-allies-say/

Determining how "successful" Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) truly was depends on who you ask, but it's increasingly hard to claim that DOGE made any sizable dent in federal spending, which was its primary goal.

Just two weeks ago, Musk himself notably downplayed DOGE as only being "a little bit successful" on a podcast, marking one of the first times that Musk admitted DOGE didn't live up to its promise. Then, more recently, on Monday, Musk revived evidence-free claims he made while campaigning for Donald Trump, insisting that government fraud remained vast and unchecked, seemingly despite DOGE's efforts. On X, he estimated that "my lower bound guess for how much fraud there is nationally is [about 20 percent] of the Federal budget, which would mean $1.5 trillion per year. Probably much higher."

Musk loudly left DOGE in May after clashing with Trump, complaining that a Trump budget bill threatened to undermine DOGE's work. These days, Musk does not appear confident that DOGE was worth the trouble of wading into government. Although he said on the December podcast that he considered DOGE to be his "best side quest" ever, the billionaire confirmed that if given the chance to go back in time, he probably would not have helmed the agency as a special government employee.

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https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/doge-did-not-find-2t-in-fraud-but-that-doesnt-matter-musk-allies-say/

Posted by Emilie Lounsberry

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/as-floods-become-more-severe-a-new-jersey-program-provides-a-model/

MANVILLE, N.J.—Richard Onderko said he will never forget the terrifying Saturday morning back in 1971 when the water rose so swiftly at his childhood home here that he and his brother had to be rescued by boat as the torrential rain from the remnants of Hurricane Doria swept through the neighborhood.

It wasn’t the first time—or the last—that the town endured horrific downpours. In fact, the working-class town of 11,000, about 25 miles southwest of Newark, has long been known for getting swamped by tropical storms, nor’easters or even just a wicked rain. It was so bad, Onderko recalled, that the constant threat of flooding had strained his parents’ marriage, with his mom wanting to sell and his dad intent on staying.

Eventually, his parents moved to Florida, selling the two-story house on North Second Avenue in 1995. But the new homeowner didn’t do so well either when storms hit, and in 2015, the property was sold one final time: to a state-run program that buys and demolishes houses in flood zones and permanently restores the property to open space.

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hockey

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Posted by siria

https://archiveofourown.org/works/76733226

Three times in one night that Jack wakes with Robby in his bed.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/76733226

Title: Jeeves' Solution
Fandom: Jeeves & Wooster
Rating: G

( 'Jeeves' I wailed )

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prompt: #475 - resolve

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I believe the theme of this book is "the road to hell" with a side order of "best laid plans". ( To be fair... )

***************************

( Read more... )

Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.

This Week's Question: What are your crafting goals for 2026?

If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

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Punters and Pushers

Recommendation: every exit an entrance somewhere else - Ros & Guil are Dead + Tom Stoppard

This about sums it up

2025 book roundup

Fandom year in review

The science of how (and when) we decide to self-censor

Lawsuit over Trump rejecting medical research grants is settled

How'd we get here?

Celto-Sinica

I haven't had a new icon in decades

Podfic: Too close for comfort (Star Wars drabble)

Media Tracker 2026

cries in Doctor Who

DOGE did not find $2T in fraud, but that doesn’t matter, Musk allies say

NJ’s answer to flooding: it has bought out and demolished 1,200 properties

Old loves

meme: 40 questions for 2025

Meeting in the Middle [by sheafrotherdon, Jack/Robby]

Jeeves & Wooster: Jeeves' Solution

My stupid freaking brain on Heated Rivalry

Finished Bee Speaker

Check-In Post - Dec 30th 2025

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