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A brief history of the last ~year in US/Europe relations

Monday, March 16th, 2026 11:32 am

Based entirey on my probably-inaccurate and decidedly non-expert recollection (I will definitely have some things in the wrong order):

USA: We're not so sure about this NATO thing. Maybe we'd honour Article 5; we'd have to think about it. You should be spending a lot more on defence. Oh and by the way, we're going to publicly undermine your governments, meet with your far-right parties, and some of our rich people with governmental ties will be funding them.

*time passes*

USA: Our new Security Strategy says that Europe is on its own, and if you care about Ukraine it's up to you to deal with it. Also, we plan to invade part of Denmark.

*time passes*

USA: Uh, when we said you should spend more on defence, we meant with American companies! Why are you buying arms elsewhere? How did this happen? That's really disrespectful. By the way, your troops basically didn't do any fighting in Afghanistan. You've never helped us. Why are you sending military personnel to Greenland?

*time passes*

USA: We want to bomb Iran! Can we use your airbases?
Europe: Why do you want to bomb Iran?USA: We don't know! Can we use your airbases?

Europe: No.

USA: Betrayal! By an ally! What about the Special Relationship?

*Iranian missile hits a British airbase in Cyprus*

UK: OK, we'll let you use our airbases for anti-missile-launcher operations. Also, we're sending an area air defense ship to Cyprus.
USA: Too late, loser, we're not interested in you joining a war to claim the credit when we already won it.

*a short time passes*

USA: Europe, we need you to send ships to protect the Strait of Hormuz, in this war that we already won.
Europe: No.
UK: Didn't you just say you didn't want us?
USA: *threatens to pull out of NATO*

Tags:

politics

[And isn’t everything risk?] by Gregory Orr

conuly

Tuesday, March 17th, 2026 06:51 am

And isn’t everything risk?

The beloved lives
Then dies,
Then (if we’re lucky)
Rises again
Into a poem or song

Or into the world
In some other form
Impossible to predict.

Simplest story, oldest tale:

Sparrows sing it
From every hedge;

And swallows, also,
From their nests on the ledge.

**********

Link

2026/037: Star Shipped — Cat Sebastian

tamaranth

Monday, March 16th, 2026 09:04 am

2026/037: Star Shipped — Cat Sebastian

Simon’s been trying to keep things friendly, neutral, light, to act like they didn’t spend two days presenting one another with secrets like outdoor cats gently placing mangled rodents at one another’s feet. [p. 205]

Simon Devereaux is thirty-four, prone to migraines and anxiety attacks, and for seven years one of the two stars of Out There, a sci-fi show described as 'Twin Peaks in space, leaning hard into the camp'. Simon's antisocial tendencies are acknowledged and accepted by the rest of the cast, and he has a comfortable enmity going with his co-star Charlie Blake, who's improbably good-looking and highly gregarious. Now Simon's thinking of leaving the show. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: cheerful

Tags:

books,
read26

FIC: Yuugen Jikkou Sisters Shushutorian, B-Robo Kabutack - Chinensis

sonofgodzilla

Monday, March 16th, 2026 05:46 am

Title: Chinensis
Universe: Oshioki Sanshimai
Prompt: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: S03E04 - Ninja Quest (Part 1)
Character(s): Yamabuki Yukiko, Yamambuki Tsukiko, Yamabuki Hanako, Okubo Reika, OCs
Series: Project R.O.S.E.
Rating: U
Warnings: N/A
Summary: Her expression was sheepish, embarrassed. This, Yamabuki Natsuko thought, was her older sister, Tsukiko, all over. The problem was, however, that her Tsukiko was no longer older than her. In fact, all three of her older sisters—Hanako, Tsukiko, and Yukiko, in order of distance from her—were now her younger sisters, ages 12, 14, and 16.
Length: 2508 words
Author's Notes: "When Darkness Fell, a New Heroine Arose." also: external link.

( Chinensis )

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: somewhere
Current Music: Leviathan - Crushing The Prolapsed Oviducts Of Virtue

Tags:

(no subject)

conuly

Monday, March 16th, 2026 12:04 am

Watch on YouTube

This is the yearly reminder

conuly

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 10:07 pm

that the Roman calendar was batshit.

Today is the Ides, okay, and yesterday was pridie Ides, so far so good, and the day before that was three days before the Ides, because the Romans a. counted backwards and b. did this weird inclusive counting, so Friday, Saturday, Ides = three days.

(Which is also how Good Friday is three days before the Resurrection, when it blatantly isn't.)

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

( Read more... )

goodbye minoanmiss

cellio

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 10:51 pm

I've known minoanmiss online for decades, and got to meet her in person twice. She turned fifty in January, and two weeks ago she had a fatal seizure. Complicated family stuff meant delaying saying anything in public.

MM had an infectious smile and took joy in sharing art, music, and food. She always had stickers to give to children she encountered when out and about, she cooked meals for her local food bank, and she spread drawings and poetry online and in tangible form. I have many postcards, holiday cards, and magnets with her work, and I've enjoyed many of her fruitcakes and confections. In a last act of giving, her organs gave life to three other people.

Due to an abusive past she struggled to see her own value sometimes. But she also saw the many friends who gathered around her and the unknown people she helped in the world, and I hope that that helped her get through rough times. There was a non-religious service on Friday (which I attended on Zoom) and an in-person memorial gathering today in Boston, and it stands out how many people from different circles were together in those places. There's going to be a virtual memorial on April 12; details will be shared later on the announcement list (signup link).

She was doing what she loved -- cooking -- when it happened, way too early. I miss her.

Tags:

people

(no subject)

twistedchick

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 11:03 pm

The way you experience time doesn't have to stay the same. There are alternatives. And they can change how you live your life.

Trancing with the Stars: JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE #27-28 (JLI 70)

tcampbell1000

scans_daily

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 06:03 pm

These two issues will be Giffen, Jones, and Sears’ last collaboration, though we’ll see a bit more of Sears in JLA. I think the brutal paranoia of this arc plays to Sears' strengths.

Last time out, the JLE repaired the dying Starro’s vessel to send him home. It blew up before reaching the stratosphere, and the JLE-ers think they’ve accidentally killed an old League foe just after he mended his ways. Miles away, starfish began to rain on London.

The Leaguers slink back toward their headquarters, still mortified at their apparent failure, unaware that anything more serious might be wrong with London since they left it.

( Imagine sleeping through Brexit. )

Tags:

Corran450's Review Series Vol. 84: King's Field (JP)

corran450

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 07:07 pm

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

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "Floor 4" - King's Field JP OST

Tags:

game reviews

Accidentally took a butter knife home from work

conuly

Saturday, March 14th, 2026 03:59 am

Not to worry, I'll return it. We have plenty enough as it is.

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

( Read more... )

(no subject)

flemmings

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 09:55 pm

Snowed again last night, an inch or so, as the winds of March kept my house chilly. Temps rose steadily during the day, disposing of the snow,nand will continue to rise overnight, to 'do we really need the heat on?' levels ie 10C/ 50F. But yes, yes we do, because the winds of March are still blowing. Rain tomorrow and then wind again as temps drop back to the minuses. Follow the bouncing ball.

Thus was indoors all day and accomplished nothing bar a half hour of exercise and a fast reread of The Moving Finger, one of the better Christies. Maybe tomorrow I will tackle those dishes, do a dark wash, and write those belated letters, but today is all sloth all the time.

Tags:

rl_26

More Heated Rivalry rewatch thoughts

princessofgeeks

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 08:27 pm

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

Current Mood: nerdy

Tags:

Fandom-dropping process, Ides of March report

erinptah

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 09:00 pm

Down to 1034 fandoms wrangled. Almost exactly 100 dropped since last check-in.

I did a big “invitation to all wranglers, look through my list and grab any webcomics you want” post, and managed to hand off 80+ that way. The rest are from dropping more A’s and B’s.

Only 39 of these have any tags that need wrangling. Higher than usual. I didn’t wrangle as much last week…tbh, I was low-key hoping some of the lightly-active webcomics would get claimed in the big invitation post.

(By “lightly” I mean “there are 1-5 new tags.” It’s still not an overwhelming burden, here. Just a mild annoyance to check lots of individual tag bins.)

While I’m at it, AMT updates: My “please combine the redundant Frosty the Snowman fandoms” request was approved, so my count will go down by 1 when that gets processed. The Madoka Magica requests I mentioned last month…are still on the waiting-for-approvals list.

I haven’t actually made the request to restructure the Fake News tree. The wranglers of other fandoms involved have all signed off on it — but now I’m waiting on a response to a different question. Which I kinda suspect has been forgotten at this point. Maybe I’ll just go forward, on the premise of “since nobody has responded to say [thing] is a roadblock for the tree, that means [thing] is not a roadblock for the tree, and I won’t worry about it.”

Tags:

Meanwhile back at the ranch

offcntr

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 05:41 pm

Rainy, blustery and cold today, here in the Milwaukee suburbs, but it could be worse. Here's pic from my sister-in-law up in Willard, taken off their back porch.

I'm so glad I drove back last night.

Tags:

snow

Title: The Life You Build

hannah

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 07:42 pm

The Life You Build (18285 words) by Hannah
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Top Gun (Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Tom "Iceman" Kazansky/Pete "Maverick" Mitchell
Characters: Ron "Slider" Kerner, Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Ron "Slider" Kerner is a Good Friend, Jewish Tom "Iceman" Kazansky, Catholic Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, Don't Ask Don't Tell, dishonorable discharge, Los Angeles, Gay Pride, Gay Wrath
Summary:

§ 925. Art. 125. Sodomy

(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.

(b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

-

I officially have a new record for walking in late to a fandom with Starbucks. It's how I've come to describe joining an established fandom, looking around at what's been written, trying to find a story that seems like it ought to have arrived by now, struggling to believe I have to do it myself, and having to do it myself. The last times I've done this for specific fandoms, it was about 21 years since their debuts, both for Deep Space Nine - Julian Bashir never getting the genetic modifications, with DS9 coming out in 1993 and the fic getting published in 2014 - and for Buffy - an all-human AU where it's still Sunnydale, Buffy living on into retirement and enjoying her life, achieving status as public figure, her and Spike simply making a wish to have a baby, with Buffy coming out in 1997 and the first of several fics getting published in 2018.

There's been a handful of times it's been for tropes and general ideas that could go to just about any fandom, like that one I wrote for mpreg where the technology to get men pregnant was developed to achieve maternity leave reform in the United States and the character exploration simply happened to be for the show Scrubs when it could just as easily have been for any number of reasonably grounded fandoms that take place in what's more or less the real world. In fact, I'm certain there's a few fandoms where having that level of medical technology in the background would have the canon make somewhat more sense given what we see them do. And it wasn't a take on mpreg I'd ever seen before. I just happened to wander in after several decades of fandom and do it myself.

I've made a habit of doing this, and like I said, I have a new record for it.

Because in the forty years this fandom's been around, nobody's written anything where Iceman and Maverick are dishonorably discharged from the Navy. Nothing. There's been fics that tackle the culture of secrecy, or Don't Ask Don't Tell, or the legalization of gay marriage in the US. There's been fics that take place in a much kinder world where it's not an issue. There's been fics that skip past it because it doesn't work with the kind of story the author's trying to write. But there hasn't been anything about receiving a dishonorable discharge and living with what comes after.

Lawrence versus Texas happened when I was in high school. I saw Don't Ask Don't Tell come and go. I remember the pictures from the San Francisco courthouse and the wave of joy from Obergefell. I like to say that fandoms like Top Gun deliver a particular type of yearning you can't get anywhere else, especially not contemporary ones, and a lot of that's from the world those fandoms take place in. It's not a world most people want to visit, and it's the world I grew up in. I didn't mind going back there for a while.

Sometimes I feel like people forget how recent all of this is. Forty years is a long time for a movie to be around, and for people to be writing fic about that movie. For the idea to have taken this long to arrive speaks to what the fandom wants to write about. I can understand that people would rather avoid this kind of thing. Just as much, I can't grasp why nobody else thought to give it a try. I'll admit to being a little proud for being the first one to do it, and a little grateful that this is a reflection of the world that was, not the world that is.

Forty years is a good long time.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Kindergarten - Voxtrot

(no subject)

jenab

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 08:30 pm

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vital functions

kaberett

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 10:37 pm

Reading. I continue to work my way through the She's A Beast archives, to a degree that is not necessarily ... uh ... optimal, in terms of all the other things I want to do...

I slowed down on LIFTOFF, on account of resuming reading from the start with A, and then this evening I tripped and fell and am. More. of the way through it. again.

Finished What Is Queer Food? by John Birdsall. Ultimately the argument is that the queerness is a function of community -- the role that food plays in eating together -- though he also tries at various points for "enjoying food is queer" (among other things), which I do not think I am the target audience for. (Having said which I am now wondering what it would take to convince me of that line of reasoning, and Ideas Are Stirring. Hmm.) Overall a mixture of anecdotes from culinary history and fiction to fill in events that went unrecorded; he does hold space for people to be complex and flawed, and I appreciated the history that was actually history, but -- alas, this did not really work for me.

Writing. Words. Continue. To be. Eked out.

Watching. The 2026 Migraine World Summit is ongoing and eating a lot of my time and brain; thus far nothing has made me actually vibrate with fury and I've had a couple of useful joining-the-dots moments, so mustn't grumble there, really. And I have finally watched the talks from last year's Day 2 that I missed due to time changes, and have started transferring my digital notes from last year into my notebook...

Playing. Inkulinati: we continue Not Dead Yet in the Exploders run on Master difficulty.

The Ridiculous Colours Game.

Sudoku... appears to have let go of my brain for now?

Cooking. This evening I have been attempting to remember how to make Spätzle, and got there eventually (part of the difficulty being that this is the first time I've made them since acquiring a dedicated Spätzlebrett, and I needed to reestablish correct consistency of the dough...)

Eating. This morning we engaged in a Weekend Morning Ritual of going down to the local fancy bakery and getting brunch from them. We also got Treats for Afternoon Tea; I am delighted that they'll supply me with cardamom buns that I don't have to actually make myself.

I have also been Craving Brownies, but not enough to actually make them myself (and also The Oven Is Broken), and consequently have eaten them courtesy of both Wagamama (ritual Thursday night takeaway) and London Zoo (Saturday afternoon tea).

Exploring. London Zoo! Saw creatures! Maybe I will even go back and edit in more details about the creatures! Creatures: good.

Several bimbles around local front gardens (etc) to enjoy Spring Flowers.

Growing. Harvested (and consumed!) more salad. Transplanted some garlic. Wrangled some more weeding. Have yet to sow any more things but really want to have Actual Plants this growing season so, uh, maybe that can be a priority for Breaks From Migraine World Summit, not that that's worked so far...

Observing. THE BAT.

And then for brunch this morning we took our breakfast slightly further than usual to a different park bench, this one surrounded by daffodils, and then additionally wandered a little way down the New River (neither new, nor a river) to see if the coots were doing things yet (which I have also been checking every time I go to the pharmacy to pick up meds). The coots aren't, BUT there were TEN EGYPTIAN GOSLINGS peeping about the place!!! At least one of whom was Extremely keen on coming All the way down the bank and plapping along the edge of the bricks, presumably because they were warm and felt nice on feet? Certainly two very gentle attempts to chase it back towards its parents got them contemplating hissing at me, and only persuaded it to maybe do the thing for about thirty seconds at most, so I gave up on that and just stood back and watched them for a bit, and then was very relieved that the foolhardy baby did upon parents Alarm Calling (as best we can tell about A Passing Dog) go FWEEP FWEEP FWEEP all the way back up and into the bundle of its siblings. An unexpected and very welcome delight.

Tags:

vital functions

Done Since 2026-03-08

$mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)$

mdlbear

Sunday, March 15th, 2026 10:37 pm

Note: I haven't had more than a short nap in over 36 hours. So this is going to be a really short and possibly incoherent post.

The main thing this week was my (short) trip to the US -- first solo transatlantic flight. Far easier than I'd been afraid it would be. The bank errands didn;t get run, but I got to the Wednesday grief group gathering in Third Place Commans, got my driver's license renewed (and had a nice long chat with MG from the Tuesday group, while she drove me down to the DOL in Tukwilla), and had lunch with my kids on my (79th) birthday. The sushi place was closed, but we went next door and had ramen and pork buns.

I took Lilac, and got everything done that needed to be done, but it was a struggle. Some scattered commentary below. There are links below but you'll have to dig them out yourself -- I'm going to bed. With my cats.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Current Mood: don't know. mostly underslept
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: earworms from watching Fantasia on the plane

Tags:

done,
links

Sporker Intro: Waltzoid was/is here!

waltzoid

das_sporking2

Saturday, February 28th, 2026 03:11 pm

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

Current Mood: nervous
Current Music: "Dancing Megalopolis" - SimCity 2000 soundtrack

Tags:

.sporker intro

More stuff to read, yay!

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A brief history of the last ~year in US/Europe relations

[And isn’t everything risk?] by Gregory Orr

2026/037: Star Shipped — Cat Sebastian

FIC: Yuugen Jikkou Sisters Shushutorian, B-Robo Kabutack - Chinensis

(no subject)

This is the yearly reminder

goodbye minoanmiss

(no subject)

Trancing with the Stars: JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE #27-28 (JLI 70)

Corran450's Review Series Vol. 84: King's Field (JP)

Accidentally took a butter knife home from work

(no subject)

More Heated Rivalry rewatch thoughts

Fandom-dropping process, Ides of March report

Meanwhile back at the ranch

Title: The Life You Build

(no subject)

vital functions

Done Since 2026-03-08

Sporker Intro: Waltzoid was/is here!