ishie | Network

As a post-Christmas treat, I bought myself this Emile Henry dutch oven and the instructions say to boil milk in it (and then clean it out) before using it the first time? I've never heard of that, but my other dutch ovens are enameled cast iron, not ceramic. Has anyone heard of this/done this?

anyway, mainly I bought it because I want to try this no-knead everything bread but didn't want to deal with my 6 qt cast iron dutch oven, which is extremely heavy and also tucked away in a closet somewhere. My plan is to mix it up tomorrow after work since it needs an on-the-counter overnight rise, and then bake it Saturday morning. We'll see how it goes!

I might also make garlic and bread soup again this weekend, and also maybe some version of citrus and soy noodles (it's a ramen recipe but I'm just going to use angel hair instead since I already have it) for dinner tomorrow. Oh, and those orange cranberry scones again - the cranberries are still taking up too much room in my freezer and must be used up!

*

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Golden - Huntr/x

senmut

kalloway, I agree! SPRING TIME NOW!

savagelove_feed

Posted by Dan Savage

https://savage.love/savagelove/2026/01/29/struggle-session-burn-after-reading/

https://savage.love/?p=11618

Actually, you might wanna burn this one before reading. You’ve been warned. It’s ironic that this letter came in this week, as we had a sewage pipe burst in our basement and… yeah. Let’s just say we were living the dream. Not our dream, to be clear, but definitely the dream of the LW’s husband. … Read More »

The post Struggle Session: Burn After Reading appeared first on Dan Savage.

https://savage.love/savagelove/2026/01/29/struggle-session-burn-after-reading/

https://savage.love/?p=11618

anais_pf posting in

thefridayfive

These questions were suggested by

twirlandswirl.

How many times a day do you . . .

1. Brush your teeth?

2. Shower?

3. Check your E-mail?

4. Check LJ? (or DW?)

5. Eat?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

prisca posting in

fic_promptly

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case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #6964 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 09 secrets from Secret Submission Post #994.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

greghousesgf

Had some Three Gardens tea. Yesterday I got a message from the fools who run this apt bldg that they're going to be replacing the lighting fixtures sometime between 8 and 5 from 2/4 to 2/13, so I have to get up and take a shower, get dressed, etc. before 8 for all 9 of those days because I do not want those people barging in when I'm not dressed or something. What a pain in the ass. I like to sleep late and anyway most of the light fixtures work fine.

Current Music: the Rolling Stones

stonepicnicking_okapi

Today is National Puzzle Day!

Snow is my favorite weather for doing jigsaw puzzles so this is the one I did this weekend. It is cheekily named "Promises, Promises" (the big bottle is advertising 'love tonics' and the like) 500 pieces, Charles Wysocki, Buffalo Games.

And I like that I have started using puzzle pieces as ephemera in my collages.

Please check out the sticky post of my journal for all the recommendations I collected in last year's Snowflake Challenge for different kinds of puzzles: https://stonepicnicking-okapi.dreamwidth.org/606650.html

And since it's Thursday, have a poem about a jigsaw puzzle. "The Puzzle" by Howard Nemerov

puzzle poem

stonepicnicking_okapi

Snowflake Challenge: A mug of coffee or hot chocolate with a snowflake shaped gingerbread cookie perched on the rim sits nestled amidst a softly bunched blanket. A few dried orange slices sit next to it.

Challenge #14

In your own space, create a promo and/or rec list for someone new to a fandom.

I wasn't going to do this one but in the interest of completeness, I am going to talk about BTS, the Korean pop group.

There are seven members (stage names RM, Jin, SUGA, jhope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook). They've all done solo albums and three have done solo tours. They've all done their compulsory military service (or public service in SUGA's case) BTS is definitely a product of the Korean system of creating pop groups but, in my opinion, they are now much larger than the system that created them. There were and are three major pop music companies in Korea. BTS was created by a different company, a very small company and that is part of their origin story, underdogs coming out on top, disrespected by the industry in the beginning and now worldwide stars. I like their songs and I like their performances. Their fans are called ARMY. I've been an ARMY since August 2021.

This is the video I used to learn who was who in the beginning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFlWlTqHZIo

I recommend the channel DKDK TV for videos explaining BTS songs in the context of Korean culture and music culture. (note you have to do some digging. They've done a lot of stuff and most of it isn't interesting if you look under Kpop playlist then find different BTS songs explained)

They did a very helpful video the history Kpop in 20 minutes to put BTS in context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPS4tCHT6SA

And this is their explanation of Arirang (which is the name of the new BTS album to be dropped 20 Mar and the global tour to start in April): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Tg7JwdepM

Doolset is the only Korean-English translator of their songs I trust 100%. Unfortunately, I don't think they're active anymore:
https://doolsetbangtan.wordpress.com/

The YT commentators I trust for current news are HYBE boy: https://www.youtube.com/@HYBEBOY613 and Asian Entertainment and Culture: https://www.youtube.com/@AsianEntertainmentandCulture

This is the second video I ever watched of them and it's what got me interested. I was actually looking for something on the BBC and accidentally hit their cover of "Missing You" (also BBC radio 1) and then this one and then fell down the rabbit hole. This video is actually not a great representation of their entire body of work, but it was my entry point, nonetheless.

Watch on YouTube

shewhostaples

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

Create a promo and/or rec list for someone new to a fandom

Well, I was enthusing about The Count of Monte Cristo the other day, so I shall expand on that a bit. (Also see 2019 post here.

It's a French novel (original title: Le Comte de Monte Cristo) by Alexandre Dumas (père), first published in serial form from 1844-46 and then as a complete novel in 1846. (There were two Alexandre Dumas, father and son. The father is most famous for The Three Musketeers and the son is most famous for The Lady of the Camellias.)

The first part of the book stars too-good-to-be-true sailor Edmond Dantès, who is framed for a crime of which he is, obviously, innocent, and imprisoned in an island prison just outside Marseille. There he encounters the Abbé Faria, who knows where to find some hidden treasure on another island, tiny Monte Cristo, if only he could get free... Well, he can't, but Edmond is younger and stronger and has a much better chance.

The rest of the book follows the consequences - for Edmond (who has restyled himself as Count of Monte Cristo), and for the three men who stitched him up, and for their nearest and dearest. (Edmond has been in prison for a while, and they've all done rather well for themselves - implausibly so, in some cases.) They take a while to work themselves out, but they're very satisfying even as they're somewhat horrifying. It's revenge with an unlimited budget, and then having to come to terms with what that does to a person. (If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then unlimited revenge... erm. Anyway.)

I love the melodrama. I love the Gothic vibe. I love the canon lesbians (Eugénie, the daughter of one of the three villains and an impoverished friend who sings opera with her) who get a happy ending under their own author's nose. I love the background detail, Parisian society, the faint odour of decadence.

Warnings: the dodgy opinions you'd expect for 1846. Alexandre Dumas was in fact Black, but this doesn't stop him going unfortunately Orientalist in places.

Also note that it's very long - about 1200 pages in my edition. This is a plus for me: I read it in difficult times and by the time I get to the end something will have changed somewhere. It's worth being careful about the translation, as some of the older ones are also bowdlerisations and lose vital Eugénie bits. Which is a travesty.

stonepicnicking_okapi

astrolabe

noun

[A-struh-layb]

a compact instrument used to observe and calculate the position of celestial bodies before the invention of the sextant

---

This was Webster's word of the day for 23 Jan and it came to my attention for the Chaucer quote:

“Thyn Astrolabie hath a ring to putten on the thombe of thi right hond in taking the height of thinges.” A Treatise on the Astrolabe by Geoffery Chaucer. I heard it in the voice Martin Jarvis uses to narrate Good Omens, especially the parts of Agnes Nutter's predictions.

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: impressed

spikedluv

Best Medicine: I enjoyed this ep better than last week’s. ( spoilers )

Wild Cards: Good ep. ( spoilers )

conuly

and every day when E leaves she bolts up to my room and burrows under my covers for a few hours until she feels prepared to cope with the day.

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

( Read more... )

yhlee

handspun silk yarn, fountain pen for scale

Silk handspun destined for

ilyena_sylph!

There's a lot of need for emotional support right now. :]

Back to book edits (CODE AND CODEX).

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: hopeful

cimorene

Duke’s certainly did not rely for its popularity on external display. It was approached by three flights of narrow and rickety stairs, and the visitors had to satisfy two rather seedy-looking janitors, not in uniform, at top and bottom. And, when they entered the Club itself, Ellery had a still greater surprise. The famous Duke’s consisted of one very long low room—or rather of three long, low attics which had been amateurishly knocked into one. The decorations were old and faded, and the places where the partitions had been were still marked by patches of new paper pasted on to hide the rents in the old. The ventilation was abominable, and what windows there were did not seem to have been cleaned for months. The furniture—a few seedy divans and a large number of common Windsor chairs and kitchen tables—seemed to have been picked up at secondhand from some very inferior dealer. Tables and floor were stained with countless spillings of food and drink, and a thick cloud of tobacco smoke made it quite impossible to see any distance along the room. There was only one redeeming feature, and Ellery’s eye fell upon it almost as soon as he entered the place. Near the door was a magnificent grand piano, on which someone was playing really well an arrangement from Borodine’s Prince Igor.

—GDH Cole, The Brooklyn Murders (1923)

summerstorm

I can't remember if it was January 26 or 27, but either way, I'm three years sober? I can't believe I've been on bupropion for three years, is the weirder part. I've been playing ttrpgs for that long! Wild.

My Pathfinder 2e adventure path actually ended (ish) this week -- we beat the BBEG of Age of Ashes in a really tough fight that didn't draw out as much as I expected, but I definitely threw everything I had at it, hero points, focus points, high level spell slots, expensive potions (to fly over the acid pool), the one single-target nonspecified damage spell I learned ages ago for no particular reason and never used because Kauri is a druid and leans elemental (Disintegrate), just. Everything. And I got the killing blow with a Pulverizing Cascade, which was really cool because it's the one water spell Kauri has continued to use even once we hit the level where we get 6th rank spells and I stopped using Hydraulic Push and Crashing Wave so often. Even after that, I flavored all my cold spells as drawing moisture from the air, so it's been a whole thing and it's nicely thematic. We'll see what we need to wrap up beyond that this Friday, but we handled pretty much everything else beforehand, so I will be making a character (or two?) for Season of Ghosts soon. I'll miss my baby though.

Fantasy High (the campaign I'm in, not the D20 series) also wrapped up its freshman year quest this past weekend, in session 50 just to be extra satisfying. We went to hell! And then to Annwn. I'm excited to see what

yarnofariadne does for our next quest, and what she continues to do with the Celtic mythology theme I dropped on her, if anything.

*

As far as my personal life, I'm... okay? Low on money, like my mom is gonna have to actually ask her sister or I'm gonna have to ask online for help with the electric bill low, but what else is new. I finally found the missing package from Springfield today; ( the ordeal )

*

Anyway. I'm gonna go back to my DungeonFog tutorials. I was hoping to make a little battlemap for the last session of my Friday group's Christmas Adventure, not sure if I'll manage that, but at least I'm getting through the tutorials. Don't think I've ever approached a thing this way but hopefully it will help with the feeling of 'oh god what do I do with this interface,' even if I picked the map maker that felt closer to what I'm used to. It certainly feels like the Correct Thing to do, like reading the manual before you fuck with stuff. But I have always been too impatient.

Have also been doing jigsaw puzzles and I sorted my sister's Arkham Horror puzzle last night, so I can fall back on that if the spoons really are gone. I try not to get started on the jigsaw puzzles before 8 PM because I'm very bad at stopping. I finished my previous one at 12:30 AM on Sunday with Ciri rolling over it and not letting me see the empty slots I had left. It was a fun extra challenge. I really love that puzzle to pieces, though. I'm very frustrated that I can't figure who got me it, but it was on my wishlist Christmas 2024 and I spent all of 2025 stuck on that one lady with the horse (really stuck on puzzling at all, I enjoyed the puzzle once I got started).

*

Puzzling has allowed me to watch The Pitt as it's airing so far (unsure on new doctor, love Mel to pieces, love the new nurse, love Mohan always and forever) and almost catch up on 9-1-1 -- I'm up to the second episode of S9. Honestly, puzzling while watching some of those S8 episodes made it more bearable, and then I locked in to enjoy Seismic Shifts because I do love me a good fictional disaster. I need to post some Buck/Eddie recs for

spikedluv at some point, I said I would for holiday_wishes and I've got a few but I want to list a couple more.

(As an aside... when did we embrace the portmanteaus, and why? It feels so wrong to use them. So fucking wrong. But they're so widespread that it also feels weird to use the normal slash form for pairings! What IS up with that, god.)

*

Oh, I posted some photos of my planner decor~

journalsandplanners here if anyone is interested! Still figuring out the day-a-page format. This page is my favorite so far, and I've gone through like, all my pens and markers to figure out what works for headings like that and doesn't bleed like a motherfucker. (There are some markers that are the perfect color but holy shit you can see them through TWO whole pages. And they're decent paper!)

Anyway. Happy Thursday! Hope things are going well for all y'all. <3

smallhobbit

I've done plenty of cross stitch this month, some started last month for early January birthdays, others only stitched this month.

( January crafts )

oursin

But hey, after A WEEK I have a new passport! - their website says may take up to three weeks, so I am very impressed with this. Also have the old one back (sent separately). The photo of course strongly resembles a headshot from a C19th volume of an institution for the criminally insane at which the head doc had taken to photography and theories of physiognomy, but don't they always?

***

In the world of spammyity-spam-spam:

Really, I am quite tempted to 'deliver an oral talk' (? as opposed to doing a presentation in the form of interpretative dance?) at the 13th International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (ICGO-2026 Asia) as it's in Kyoto: 'adorned with early autumn foliage, offering a serene backdrop for academic exchanges, you’ll have the chance to experience traditional tea ceremonies, stroll through ancient bamboo groves, and engage with a city that values both heritage and scientific progress'.

But am not at all tempted (more DESTROY THIS WITH FIRE & EXTREME PREJUDICE) by this solicitation:

Imagine if, instead of being buried in PDFs, your work could answer questions directly, 24/7. Not just to students, but to anyone curious, anywhere in the world.
When corporate companies, grant providers, grad students, journalists ask AI about your field, they get up to date info and not outdated summaries.
Today, your Google Scholar profile just sits there. No one can ask it questions. No one can discover the depth of your work through AI search.
AI is becoming the new search engine for expertise. And academics are invisible.
We built something to fix this. Your own .cv domain. LLM optimized. SEO optimized. Analytics. Branded URLs. Digital Chat Twin.

AAAAARRRGGH.

Ask ME the questions, please. Because, and I quote, 'No one can discover the depth of your work through AI search'. Many a true word.

***

And, in fact, this week has been quite the flurry of that Dr oursin being relevant - apart from query on scholarly listserv which was well in my wheelhouse but had me going 'would be helpful to indicate what reading - apart from google search - you had done before asking for suggestions' -

Request to referee a paper on topic on which I am somewhat reluctantly considered a Nexpert, for journal in an area in which I am not.

Query from researcher about sources for a possible project of theirs.

Invitation to go and talk about the History of 'Engines of Love' (as the condoms found in William Empson's college rooms were described) in connection with an exhibition in the summer.

Have also had agreeable email exchanges with Elderly Antiquarian Bookseller friend.

***

On the downside, printer is acting up, doing both being fussy about toner cartridge AND thinking there's a paper jam in Tray 1. Sigh.

&c

ishieland, for fic!
twitter, for boring!

tumblr, for stones!
tumblr, for spam!

pinboard, for links!

last.fm, for music!

a banger in the mouth

Network

you know together we're glowing

Mail Call

Struggle Session: Burn After Reading

The Friday Five for 30 January 2026

Thursday, January 29 - Free for All

[ SECRET POST #6964 ]

(no subject)

National Puzzle Day!

Snowflake Challenge #14

Snowflake Challenge: day 14

Word: Astrolabe

Heated Rivalry rec

TV Talk: Best Medicine & Wild Cards

Moonpie is not a fan of CUNY/SUNY having started up again

emotional support spinning

"What do you wish You'd Known When You First Started Managing?"

A fascinating 1920s portrait of a seedy London nightclub

with spoons enough to ramble, I guess, at the very least

Crafts - January 2026

Not quite a medley of extemporanea

&c

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