Network

Current Mood: gloomy

There were technical difficulties

Everything was going great yesterday-until right before I went online, when I possibly clicked on something wrong, or maybe the problems that failed to make themselves apparent during the test recording just decided to show up on their own. I spent half an hour struggling to get the stream to work. The game audio wasn't playing, and the audio I was getting instead was appalling, and repeating itself at points, or maybe that was just the stream in general, I'm no longer even sure. I gave up in tears.
After venting in one of my discords, something suggest I ask for help in the OBS discord. So I did. They gave me a couple of pieces of advice that helped, probably most notably muting the audio from my webcam. But the game audio is still muting whenever I try to do anything with the OBS, and will almost certainly still do so when I try to do so with Twitch's control page, and their only suggestion for that was that I try to control those remotely, which honestly does not sound realistic. Also their analyzer is still claiming one of my audio devices has a sample rate that doesn't match the rest, and with the webcam muted I can't find any that aren't at 48000 Hz. And while the audio doesn't sound terrible anymore, it's lost volume, and still doesn't sound all that great, and I've heard all too much about how you need it to be good.
I'm tempted to just take today off from trying to deal with it. Go see the cherry trees in DC, maybe, since the ones in the neighborhood are finally blooming. I don't know if I'm even going to try to stream next weekend, but I might aim to make a second go at it the weekend after that.

Entry tags:

Interesting Links for 22-03-2026

1. Some Divorce Trends That Aren't Leaving Your Partner Mid-Hike: (tags:satire funny relationships murder )

Heavy Mist

A light mist is when we can't see the hills on the far side of town. A heavy mist is when we can't see the town.

This morning there's a heavy mist. But perhaps the sun will burn it away.....

Last weekend we were very busy, gallumphing all over the Midlands. This weekend we are busy enough. On Friday we drove up to Basingstoke to see an exhibition of women's art that my sister had curated at the Willis. Yesterday we were househunting in Eastbourne with and on behalf of Wendy and Mary.

There are lots of artistic women in my mother's half of the family. I have on display around the house a couple of accomplished still life watercolours by my great-grandmother, a number of wood carvings by my grandmother, one or two ceramics by my mother and several paintings by my sister. Four generations of female artists in a direct line....

Today at the Meeting House one of our chaps is starting a discussion group which he's calling (I think) Quaker Explorers. He wants us to talk about the deep stuff. In his other life he's a psychotherapist....

Entry tags:

Sharing my planner

Hi! I'm new here! A little late but sharing pics of my planner, it's a custom pre-printed from So Typical Me (as I said in a comment here, I'm a creative person trapped in a body that can't draw for s*** so I like preprinted, though I'm sad at the same layout EVERY week. Oh well)

( Planner )

(sorry if I haven't tagged this properly

Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Great Expectations - The Gaslight Anthem

Entry tags:

recs: 2026

Rec me mysteries and mystery-adjacent media, please!

I love mysteries and heist stories, but I have trouble finding good ones that scratch that particular itch. Does anyone have recs?

I am particularly interested in books and television, but I would happily watch a good movie if you know the perfect one. Fantasy elements and/or strong worldbuilding are a definite plus. If something isn't necessarily a traditional mystery or heist but is similar to things I've listed below in other ways, I'd love to hear about it. I'm not a big fan of cops, but am willing to tolerate them for a strong story.

Behind the cut, I've listed stories I've particularly enjoyed and stories I've bounced off.

( Data Points )

Current Mood: exhausted
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/24022.html

Entry tags:

Zine: my love is strange

Hey, so... since we got a printer, and since our shoulder and eyeballs are increasingly reluctant to let us read long things on the computer, we've taken to slapping together little zines for our personal enjoyment of our favorite stuff. We also use them to fool around with typography and stuff. You know, just make fun little things.

And then we were like, "Hey... what if we shared some of these?"

So here's our newest fun thing: my love is strange: an anthology of eight hundred years of unusual care. It's just a commemoration of being together in ways my current society would like to pretend doesn't exist and never did. Alt-texted, illustrated with pictures from the public domain. Table of contents:

( I wasn't joking about it covering a swathe of eight hundred years by the way. )

Entry tags:

"Dum superbit impius" [music, pols]

[requires both audio and video]

Jonasquin on YT (previously) has written a wholly original motet in the 16th century style after Desprez upon the cantus firmus "Seven Nations Army", for the words of Psalm 10, verses 2, 3, 7-11.

Comment would be superfluous.

2026 Mar 20: Jonasquin YT: "A 16th century motet for the US President"

Watch on YouTube

Click through to the video on YT to see the translation in the description.

Saturday March 21 2026

Do you have a Doctor Who community or a journal that we are not currently linking to? Leave a note in the comments and we'll add you to the watchlist (

doctor_watch).

Editor's note: Because of the high posting volume and the quantity of information linked in each newsletter, doctor_who_sonic will no longer link fanfiction that does not have a header. For an example of what a "good" fanfic header is, see the user info. Spoiler warnings are also greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Off-DW News
Blogtor Who's Friday Video of the Day is a clip from Vampires in Venice

(News from

blogtorwho_feed and

doctorwhonews_feed, among others.)

Fanfiction
Completed
Twilight Time by

badly_knitted [Eleven, William Pratt (Spike) | G | Crossover with Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)]

If you were not linked, and would like to be, contact us in the comments with further information and your link.

Entry tags:

happy equinox, etc

Today was A Travel Day; yesterday, in preparation for same, I Ran Errands, including "acquiring Tiny Cake" and "visiting the pharmacy".

On the way from those two jobs to the next couple, I passed Several Good Things.

One was a new-to-me flavour of completely ridiculous daffodil:

a double daffodil, with white petals and inner trumpet, protruding past a much shorter orange outer trumpet

It's a double not in the sense of having a confusing froth of intermingled trumpets (as of Double Fashion or Double Camparnelle, both of which exist locally), but in the sense of having two nested trumpets, one shorter and orange, from which the longer white one protrudes. I have never! previously! seen a thing like this! I am really enjoying my current streak of encountering varieties of daffodil that make me go "what the fuck???"

Shortly thereafter I checked over my shoulder while crossing a tiny bridge and was startled and delighted to see A COOT UPON THE NEST that, last I passed it, was clearly still derelict. Obviously I went back and Gazed Upon It for Some Time and was eventually rewarded by it STANDING UP to reveal SEVEN??? (possibly) EGGS!!!

And the Egyptian goslings were peeping about the place when I subsequently passed them on my way back up the hill. A+ errands would run again.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Rose Tattoo - Dropkick Murphys

Entry tags:

chore accountability

(no subject)

This time I remembered to queue up two hours' worth of music before locking myself out of my phone with my focus app. I use Focus Friend, which is bare bones enough that I don't need to think about it too much when I use it.

Today's missions are to clean the kitchen, tidy surfaces in the living room, and declutter the bedroom. We ran dishes this morning, and our roommate is out of town, so there's one less person around to make messes. Not too much to do. In between I'm hoping to keep plugging away at my Rare Kink Buffet fills. I had hoped to write multiple short ones, but what originally seemed to be a short idea is ballooning into a multichap. So we shall see. Wish me luck!

Progress! The house is a little cleaner, and I've added about 1200 words to my Rare Kink Buffet fill. This is chapter three, which I had hoped would be the last chapter. I also hoped chapter two would be the last chapter, so it appears that the length of this one is just utterly out of my control.

Current Music: Jake Blount & Mali Obomsawin, "The Green Road"

You are just the fingertips of something

The afternoon's mail brought my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #86, containing my poem "Northern Comfort." I wrote it out of my discoveries of the ghost-ground that has been directly underfoot all my life and longer, from King Philip's War to Pomp's Wall, and this administration and its murderous terror of history. It shares a page and an issue of emptiness with a precisely targeted incantation by Gwynne Garfinkle as well the equally hollowing fiction and poetry of Kris Schokrowsky, Penny Durham, Carsten Cheung, Jennifer Crow, and more. I almost referred to the covert art by John and Flo Stanton, obscured by shattered webs of negative space or the rust-light of abandoned industries. Subscribe! Contribute! Make the right kind of strangeness in this world. I am off to South Station to collect one north-traveling seal.

World Poetry Day again, apparently

And I don't think I've had Edna before??

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

Entry tags:

Just Create - Straw Edition

What are you working on? What have you finished? What do you need encouragement on?

Are there any cool events or challenges happening that you want to hype?

What do you just want to talk about?

What have you been watching or reading?

Chores and other not-fun things count!

Remember to encourage other commenters and we have a discord where we can do work-alongs and chat, linked in the sticky.

Current Mood: excited

Today's the day!

Been making a few last minute preparations, including a little bit of promotions in a couple of discords, though I really don't know if I'll get any viewers at all today. Also looked into monetization, though I'm not doing that for the moment. It took an aggravatingly long time to determine whether Twitch will put ads on my stream or not, but it now seems like they can, but aren't likely to bother right now. After the test recording I did on Wednesday night mostly just to see if the sound quality was okay and also if my game would crash (It ran smoothly for the 50 minutes...) I am currently standing at the front of the Counting House, which I suppose will make for as interesting a first stream. I'll probably be streaming Date Everything! and Dispatch over the next week as well, though I'm less certain what I'll stream when I'm done with the latter. It's all happening over here, starting today at 1 PM Eastern.

Entry tags:

Interesting Links for 21-03-2026

1. Chuck Norris dead at 86: A history of the actor's anti-LGBTQ+ comments: (tags:bigotry obituary LGBT )
2. School book banning escalates in the UK as Greater Manchester secondary school censors scores of books: (tags:censorship UK school libraries OhForFucksSake )

Entry tags:

Varsity!

This time a week ago I was on the ice with fellow Cambridge alumni for "Alumni game 1", kicking off Varsity. Photos (from one of my Warbirds teammates!) that actually make me look good are over at my hockey insta but here's my personal favourite, capturing a moment in motion:

After about an hour on the ice (2 periods running clock, 4 lines), I had a quick shower, and then spent the next ten or so hours mostly on my feet, doing music and announcements for my Huskies teammates, and scoresheet and in-game announcements for Women's Blues and Men's Blues. Final scores were:

Alumni game 1: 1-1
Alumni game 2: not sure, but we won
Huskies: 3-8
Women's Blues: 0-1
Men's Blues: 5-1

The alumni games were a great vibe: we cared, but it wasn't that intense. A whole load of the women I played with in 2022-23 came back, and for me that was really joyful, plus I got to make some new friends. A couple of the older guys in game 1 had played with my old work colleague Brian Omotani back in the day. Although he didn't play, he was there to watch, and he made time to come and find me for a brief catchup later in the day.

The rest of the day though was a different gear. The Huskies game was especially tough to watch, and I felt every goal against my teammates. The Women's Blues game was incredible, the team worked so hard and it was probably the best I've seen them play. And the Men's Blues winning so decisively was delightful, especially as the first goal came from one of the two ex-Huskies (and they both got an assist each later). The whole day was incredibly intense. And then I took my kit home to hang it up, changed, met up with everyone at Mash, danced until the club closed, went to Maccies (and realised just how much my feet hurt) until that closed, and sat on a bench gossiping with two of my favourite people in the club while one of them finished his burger. Eventually we all cycled home. I didn't want the day to end, but I had things to do on Sunday.

That is, very nearly, the end of the season with just the Nationals weekends in Sheffield to go. We've finished the league games, we've had Varsity, we're shifting to "summer ice" open practices, and even had the very last "S&C" gym session on Thursday this week. Some people will graduate and leave soon, and I will miss them so much, but I am so grateful for this university season and the time I've had with these wonderful people.

The Missing Middle

Found a nice gaming article on Bluesky (Three Tiers of RPG Publishing), which led me to another article, which I found insightful and clever (and a bit sad, as accurate talk about economics these days tends to be), and then hit the bit that blew my mind.

They Killed Normal and Called It Progress: "Julia Roberts, Applebee's, Bandcamp, your manager, and the death of everything in between. (Also, Sweetgreen is the A24 of dining and I will die on this hill.)"

Have you noticed that the middle is gone from everything? Restaurants, companies, careers, music, retail, the economy itself. What replaced it is a barbell: one enormous weight on each end, nothing in the center, and most of us trying not to get crushed by the bar.

And the replacement does look better every single time, I grant you that. The A24 film is better than the $40 million adult drama from 2007, yeah, we can all agree on that. The Sweetgreen bowl is better than the Applebee’s chicken parm, sure. Your favorite Substack is sharper than the mid-list magazine that folded in 2019. Every replacement is a genuine upgrade. But every replacement serves fewer and fewer people.

That's not the mind-blowing part. That's the thesis, the baseline, the part that he spends half of the ~3000 word essay explaining, giving examples of, making neat comparisons across different industries.

( It's amazing that it doesn't get boring because it truly is the same damn pattern )

What If.....

What if the hammering of fossil fuel facilities across the Middle East persuaded the energy companies to develop and release the alternative technologies they've been sitting on?

Entry tags:

hist_medieval_tech

The cost of literacy [medieval hist]

I knew that other contemporaneous cultures than those of Europe had unfathomably higher numbers of books than Europeans did, but I didn't know about this in retrospect obvious reason why:

2026 Mar 19: Dwarkesh Patel feat. Ada Palmer [DwarkeshPatel YT]: "Why Medieval Books Cost as Much as a House" (1 min, 7 sec):

Watch on YouTube

Without papyrus, what you're writing on is a dead sheep. And if you think of the price of a head of lettuce and the price of a leather jacket, you're understanding the difference between a sheet of papyrus and writing on a dead sheep. So every page of a medieval book is as expensive as that much of a leather jacket. And a medieval book hand written costs as much as a house.

And so to have a library is to be not just rich but mega rich. So only the wealthiest cities contain anybody who has a library. The great library of the University of Paris, the library from Europe's perspective, has 600 books.

There's definitely more than 600 books in this room. Every kiosk at an airport selling Dan Brown novels has more than 600 books. This is nothing.

And at the same time as that, in the Middle East, sultans have libraries of over a thousand books or 5,000 books. There are libraries in Sub-Saharan Africa with thousands of books.* There are libraries in China with thousands of books. Because they in China have cheap paper and rice paper. The Middle East has papyrus.

Europe, and only Europe, is writing on a leather jacket.

* Three hundred thousand. It's been thirteen years and I am still not remotely over that fact. Every time I encounter it anew, my SCA persona gets acrophobic trying to imagine a library that big and has to sit down and put her head between her knees so she doesn't pass out.

Entry tags:

pols,
ω

Massachusetts not the next? [Ω, MA/US]

The previously expected ICE enforcement surge never materialized. Curious.

I wonder if this just means they're short-staffed. Or perhaps distracted.

(I also wonder if somebody made a judgment call not to try what they did in MN in MA, but have largely rejected the notion. It would not be to anybody's advantage if they did, on either side, but I'm not seeing a lot of good judgment in evidence anywhere.)