[phone rings in my hotel room] Me: “Hello?” Concierge, sounding very uncertain and slightly bemused: “Um, hello, is that Nanila, who just checked in with us today?” Me: “Yes, that’s correct.” Concierge: “Um…I have a gentleman on the line who would like to speak to you. I…I think he’s your father? I’m so sorry, I’m really not sure.” Me, chuckling: “That sounds like him. Did he say his name was [Firstname Lastname]?” Concierge: “I couldn’t understand him when he said his name. I think it’s my phone line.” Me, drily: “Please don’t be sorry. That will be one of two things: his accent, or he hasn’t got his teeth in.” Concierge, now relaxing a bit and giggling: “Would you like me to put him through?” Me: “Please do, thank you.”
*pause*
Me: “Hi Dad, how are you doing?” Dad: “I tried to call you but I kept getting the prison! Where are you? Are you in XX hotel?!” Me, patiently: “Yes, Dad, I’m in the hotel.” Dad: “What room are you in? I need to write it down. Are you sure? Are you okay?” Me: “Dad. I’m in Room NN. I am fine. And if this is the prison then it’s had a tremendous facilities upgrade.” Dad: “Oh, okay. Was the traffic awful? Are you very tired? When do you want to meet for dinner? Should we go to the sushi place? Do you remember the sushi place? I need to put my teeth in!” Me: “Yes, yes, whenever you want to eat, yes, yes, and yes, you do.”
For anyone who has met me in person and has thought to themselves, “This woman has no idea how to hold a conversation like a normal human being,” this is 100% where I got it from. Thanks, Dad.
People who switch to a fully unprocessed diet don’t just eat differently—they eat smarter. Research from the University of Bristol shows that when people avoid ultra-processed foods, they naturally pile their plates with fruits and vegetables, eating over 50% more food by weight while still consuming hundreds fewer calories each day. This happens because whole foods trigger a kind of built-in “nutritional intelligence,” nudging people toward nutrient-rich, lower-calorie options.
I knew Prue Leith left GBBO, but I just learned that Nigella Lawson is replacing her for this year's show! I am intrigued! (Note: I still haven't watched the most recent series - I usually save it for my summer vacation.)
I am also considering if I want to try to bake something new this weekend, or just more orange cranberry scones, so my giant bag of cranberries in the freezer slowly gets smaller. I do have plans to try a new pasta recipe and maybe some panko-crusted pork chops, but I hadn't really thought about a baking project. I will have to think on it now.
In work news, some of the stuff I was concerned about yesterday got done, finally, so I feel so much better. I still have to write my stupid review of Assistant J though. I've been putting it off but I can't put it off any longer. Ugh. Such a stupid process.
These 6 minutes of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert are very much worth your time. I've queued this video to the relevant section. Ian McKellen explains the monologue, penned by Shakespeare's own hand, that was never acted in theater until Ian McKellen himself took on the role. It's an original Shakespearean role, then McKellen acts it out for us on stage for Colbert's audience.
These are powerful words which could just as well be directed at the USA today, rather than England 400 years ago.
Click to find some minor details about the ICE invasion in north Minneapolis today...
If the relevance isn't obvious, then watch "ICE RAIDS DAY 66" (today's) livestream from Mercado Media. The relevant points of time are these:
4:51:12, with several ICE vehicles and a swarm of more than a dozen agents abducting someone, in my area of north Minneapolis.
4:53:50, where Mercado Media drives onto Broadway near the Cub grocery where I shop in person when the micro-bus takes me there, then follow the path I walk when I have to walk home from Cub, turning north on Emerson, and continuing north past 26th (when I turn towards home).
4:59:10, where they get out of their car again to record ICE agents trying to abduct someone
6:01:01, where they get out of the car again at an intersection 1 block north of where I shopped today for groceries and bought lunch at the small store I mention occasionally, one that locks their doors to eliminate "public space" that ICE tries to invade.
6:28:20, where they get out of the car again to record ICE agents.
Throughout that stretch of time, the videographer keeps mentioning that they haven't seen ICE so active in north Minneapolis before. That's my neighborhood. *sigh* They steal people, tear families apart, and occasionally murder people in cold blood, but some people still insist this is just good "law and order" activity from our federal government. The President's armed forces invading communities is just how things should be.
Go listen again to that Shakespeare speech by Ian McKellen. Go read again those Bible stories that Republican Speaker Mike Johnson claimed to understand better than the Pope. Stephen Colbert delivers this impressive repudiation.
I want a technology that helps us control the universe splitting into alternate realities. Let's cause a split where population A gets to go one direction and population B gets to go a different direction. Each "side" would be better off, wouldn't it? Nobody's harmed. The pluralists enjoy their heterogeneity, and the xenophobes enjoy their homogeneity. Everybody wins. (Secretly, I assume the xenophobes degenerate into further nitpicking amongst themselves when they have to choose a new pecking order amongst their smaller population, and their rigid authoritarianism collapses entirely.) But everyone wins, because they get exactly the world that they want, right?
Sometimes as I head to the bathroom for my bedtime rituals Purrcy comes racing to the windowsill outside the door for Wild! Shenanigans! Who can spot such a creature?!?
Comfort and self-care are SO important In These Trying Times, says Purrcy. Don't you agree? You, too, can combine sprawling with personal hygiene, if you're a cat!
This week in books (up through yesterday, because I completely blanked on that's what Wednesday is for).
#21 There Is No Antimemetics Division, by qntm It's very mind-bendingly creepy, but it fundamentally doesn't work for me because there's an underlying premise that the only minds on Earth are human. I spend too much time reading science where we deduce the existence of things we can't see to be convinced that there could be things that would be that good at messing with human minds without leaving 2nd or 3rd-order effects on the physical world.
#22 Automatic Noodle, by Annalee Newitz An extremely cheerful post-this-apoc story about robots & humans clawing their way out of war and societal collapse to make good-tasting food, dammit. A love note to San Francisco. I described the vibe as "you're wet now, but you're going to get dried off and have some delicious noodles to warm up while you hang with your friends".
#23 The Poet Empress, by Shen Tao Such a relief to read a book based on Chinese imperial harem/court politics that reflects the power-driven, unromantic historical reality. Also a relief to read a book about *any* royal-level struggle where the protagonist understands how much and how little royalty are truly important.
#24 Asunder, by Kerstin Hall The cover represents this book *extremely* poorly: it implies the subject is a contemporary young woman (judging by haircut & clothing), which is 100% not the case, and the grasping/entangling hands are very hard to see.
The actual setting is extremely interesting & deserved to be conveyed by the cover: it's a fantasy landscape inspired by South Africa, which took me a while to pick up. Just like our South Africa, the world has a complex, layered history -- in this case of magic, invasion, gods and their deaths, and of how most people are just trying to make their lives among the machinations of the powerful. The *feel* of the history as well as the landscape isn't the usual pseudo-Euroasian, but I don't get the feeling that it maps to the history of southern Africa in any direct way. But it's definitely *different*, which is good.
Karys Eska is bound twice, once to the terrifying eldritch entity Sabaster who gives her the power of a deathspeaker by which she earns her living, and now to the spirit of Ferrian, a wealthy young man who promises he can pay her all the money she needs if she can carry him to safety--inside her head. Her journey to try to release herself from these two bindings is vivid and increasingly complex. The ending is not completely satisfying, and I see that's because she's writing a direct sequel.
I fed the birds. I've seen a large flock of sparrows, one female and three male cardinals, and a starling. A small flock of other birds high in the trees may have been more starlings or perhaps mourning doves.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 2/5/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
Cleaning ALL my non-fandom links out of my to-rec list. Enjoy?
How Nicki Broke the Blueprint (YouTube) by FD Signifier. She's been going ever farther off the deep end the past few years, but damn when she was good, she was good. I really loved this older look at the hip hop landscape at the time she got big, and what she meant to a lot of female hip hop fans at the time. EDIT: LOOOOL apparently FD retitled this and put a new thumbnail on it a month ago. The video is still good, though!
The Year Without Sunshine by Naomi Kritzer. Short story about mutual aid and community building during an apocalypse. Hopeful.
Why the Democratic Tea Party Failed (and How It Could Succeed) (New Republic). What this article says about the giant hole in mainstream normie liberal media has shifted my whole perspective of the political landscape and the barriers we're facing.
The neurosurgeon said that Dad's big eye veins were unremarkable and cleared him for Heart Surgery.
The cardiac surgeons office called. I wanted surgery in March. They booked it for February 26th. Not quite, but close enough not to change. They will want him in on the 24th. I've got 2 weeks of his pay to work with for his bills.
On Thursday, Anthropic and OpenAI shipped products built around the same idea: instead of chatting with a single AI assistant, users should be managing teams of AI agents that divide up work and run in parallel. The simultaneous releases are part of a gradual shift across the industry, from AI as a conversation partner to AI as a delegated workforce, and they arrive during a week when that very concept reportedly helped wipe $285 billion off software stocks.
Whether that supervisory model works in practice remains an open question. Current AI agents still require heavy human intervention to catch errors, and no independent evaluation has confirmed that these multi-agent tools reliably outperform a single developer working alone.
Even so, the companies are going all-in on agents. Anthropic's contribution is Claude Opus 4.6, a new version of its most capable AI model, paired with a feature called "agent teams" in Claude Code. Agent teams let developers spin up multiple AI agents that split a task into independent pieces, coordinate autonomously, and run concurrently.
In 2018, we lamented as Nintendo officially replaced the Virtual Console—its long-running line of downloadable classic games on the Wii and Wii U—with time-limited access to a set of games through a paid Nintendo Switch Online subscription. Now, Hamster Corporation is doing what Nintendo no longer will by offering downloadable versions of retro console games for direct individual purchase on the Switch 2.
Today, OpenAI announced GPT-5.3-Codex, a new version of its frontier coding model that will be available via the command line, IDE extension, web interface, and the new macOS desktop app. (No API access yet, but it's coming.)
GPT-5.3-Codex outperforms GPT-5.2-Codex and GPT-5.2 in SWE-Bench Pro, Terminal-Bench 2.0, and other benchmarks, according to the company's testing.
There are already a few headlines out there saying "Codex built itself," but let's reality-check that, as that's an overstatement. The domains OpenAI described using it for here are similar to the ones you see in some other enterprise software development firms now: managing deployments, debugging, and handling test results and evaluations. There is no claim here that GPT-5.3-Codex built itself.
some washi tape I wanted has restocked at a UK retailer! Possibly a second one also! So as and when the website works out what's going on with Desired Tape #2, it is time to place a stationery order for meeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Progress With Preposterous Puzzle! I now have all the edge assembled (I think I wound up with only one piece having been Actually Wrong) and even I have managed to start filling in very slowly (I am up to... about 5 pieces placed so far? which is a further 1% down!)
I got a hug from the Child while saying goodbye this evening!
I have worked out an acceptable Wagamama order from the current menu and am feeling pretty good about my dinner.
Bread for tomorrow (anise, fig, hazelnut, copied from the local fancy bakery) is looking Extremely Promising.
Has anyone played Slay the Princess? There appear to be two versions on Steam, which one should I get? Do you need any sort of reflexes or coordination at any point?
On such a nothingburger of a day like this, where I feel like I don't have anything to talk about because it was really normal (awake, work, walk Teddy, make dinner, try to stay awake till bedtime), I am challenging myself to think of three good things.
Having taken off my clothes last night and added them to the unacceptably-large pile of liminal clothes I need to decide to wash or put away, I told myself I'd deal with it all this morning. And I did! With about five minutes before a meeting. Feels good; it was starting to weigh on my mental/emotional state having my room be untidy like this.
We saw neighbor G outside on our way to walk Teddy. We don't see as much of the neighbors now we're not standing in the driveway/on our end of the road with Gary any more; it's one of the things I miss. G is cool. He has started working at the bakery at rhe big Tesco! He said he likes it, though he also said it's very unsociable hours of course.
As I was starting to type this up, having gone to bed early for a Doof night because I feel kinda gross (I didn't get to sleep until well after 3am last night, and I think I was just sleep deprived after powering through work), D unexpectedly came upstairs to "make my back go click," as he says. It feels so much better when he's pressed some of the tension out of my muscles and spine, mmm. He's so nice.
A few Senate Democrats introduced a bill called the ‘‘ICE Out of Our Faces Act," which would ban Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from using facial recognition technology.
The bill would make it "unlawful for any covered immigration officer to acquire, possess, access, or use in the United States—(1) any biometric surveillance system; or (2) information derived from a biometric surveillance system operated by another entity." All data collected from such systems in the past would have to be deleted. The proposed ban extends beyond facial recognition to cover other biometric surveillance technologies, such as voice recognition.
The proposed ban would prohibit the federal government from using data from biometric surveillance systems in court cases or investigations. Individuals would have a right to sue the federal government for financial damages after violations, and state attorneys general would be able to bring suits on behalf of residents.
I had an appointment with my GP yesterday, and after listening to my lungs and gently touching my face to check how inflamed my sinuses were (very, I winced away from her fingers every time), I have won yet more fucking steroids and antibiotics. I spent the night in a huge amount of discomfort (understatement), and I don’t know if that’s because of the heavy-duty antibiotics, or if last night’s dinner at a restaurant had something wrong with it. I felt unwell enough that I took today off, even tho’ I’m starting to feel a tiny bit anxious about how often I’ve had to tap out of work because of my health.
We also went over my MRI results, wheee. Bursitis in both hips, mild scoliosis, a few discs that have started to bulge, and more spinal stenosis than expected. In other words, my back is absolutely messed up. I spoke to one of of the patient advocates/scheduling specialists at the neurology/back branch of Virginia Mason (I’ve been in back and forth calls with them for a few weeks); consultation appointments are being scheduled six months out, and they can’t even start scheduling appointments for August until March. I’m less than thrilled.
Kazakh superstar Dimash Qudaibergen brings arena-level drama to "Fire," delivering a fire-starting performance of the track, packed with pyrotechnics, a revved-up motorcycle, and his signature vocals, at Astana Arena in his home country.
This is a mash-up of two performances from his concerts in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, on the 13th and 14th of September 2025, where the song premiered. More info here.
I first experienced this song at his London concert and it absolutely blew me away. You'll see (hear) why.
~
Then today (5 Feb 2026) this performance:
On February 5, Dimash Qudaibergen’s musical project 'Voice Beyond Horizon' premiered, with the artist serving as its executive producer. The project opened with Dimash’s song Fire, which he performed in English, Kazakh, and Chinese.
This is a perfect example of how he constantly switches things up. No song stays the same: he adds, he subtracts, he integrates another language (or two) or changes the genre or style or combines them in different ways... the versatility is endless.
It's important to remember that not everything in the world is bleak. There are wonders also. 🔥🔥🔥🔥
(You can find the official trailer for 'Voice Beyond Horizon' here.)
I finished books 1-7 of Dungeon Crawler Carl in two weeks, and more importantly I managed to drag both my gf and DD into it too - I think that's one of my strengths :) I had a great time. ( spoilers )
Slight downside, DD and I haven't started our Hades 2 1.0 playthroughs yet, since we planned to start at the same time and she just got to book 6 of DCC ^^ Hopefully soon though.
Instead I played a few runs of Vampire Survivors again. Good for occasional short play sessions that don't require much brainpower (though it is easy to forget to look at the time...) I don't unlock something every run but almost, which feels very cool and like I'm getting somewhere even though I have no idea what to do/where to go for actual game "progression." I might look it up at some point, idk.
(I also considered exploring the new Minecraft updates - I want to find a happy ghast! And ride a nautilus!, among other things - but I lost one set of good armor/tools in the End and another in the Nether a few months ago, and both are very possible to retrieve but I haven't found the motivation yet to either get one of them or make myself new gear. Possibly keepInventory would have been a good idea after all.)
Speaking of games, specifically board games: in early January with L and two of her friends we played Wingspan, which was a lot of fun, and then we tried out Earth, which we also enjoyed a lot. That one we tried first in single player, and then we decided to try the version where you play in teams but quickly switched back because it gets a lot more tactical quickly. The third long game the three of them played was Forest Shuffle - I detect a theme ^^ We also played a quick game of Pandemic. And this reminds me that L and I didn't get a chance to play Hanabi yet, hopefully soon.
It's also been ages since I gave an update on my group's TTRPG games and our current Stars Without Number campaign! We got to level six, which means I can now do "normal" teleports without Committing Effort and it feels fantastic. And I got some other cool abilities too, like imprinting on a party member to teleport back to their side even when they are out of sight. ( Recent adventures )
Title: From All The Spaces Between Times Chapter: Chapter 70 — He Must See Evil Among the Thorns Author: elrhiarhodan / elrhiarhodan / elrhiarhodan Fandom: Star Wars, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars — Obi Wan Kenobi (TV), Star Wars — Jedi Apprentice Books Characters Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, Shmi Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, The Force as a Sentient Character, Watto, Quinlan Vos, Padmé Amidala, Sabé, Darth Maul, Yoda, Mace Windu, Adi Gallia, Quinlan Vos, Professor Huyang, The Force, Plo Koon, Vokara Che, Siri Tachi, Aayla Secura, Bant Eerin, Bruck Chun, Xanatos du Crion, Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious, Hego Damask II | Darth Plagueis, Komari Vosa, Bail Prestor Organa, Breha Organa, Bail Antilles Prestor, Rael Averross, Nim Piana, Ahsoka Tano, Sifo-Dyas, Reva Sevander, Lene Kostana (mentioned), Savage Opress, Pong Krell, The Traitor, Original Characters, Other Characters To Be Added Pairings: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Shmi Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Qui-Gon Jinn, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon Jinn (yes, we’re arrived). Bail Prestor Organa/Breha Organa Word Count: ~ 6600 this chapter Spoilers: None Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: Non-graphic reference to child-murder, graphic reference to cannibalism
Summary: Obi-Wan Kenobi has never known it, but he has always been the Force’s Champion, destined to suffer infinite sadness in defense of the Light. On his last turn on the wheel, responsibility for The Chosen One, the false child of prophecy, had been thrust upon him with no warning, and Darkness held the upper hand.
But this time, the Force has marshaled its power and will protect its Champion until the time is right, no matter how long Obi-Wan has to wait and how much he has to suffer.
Or,
Obi-Wan is reborn as a twelve-year old.
He wakes up on a slavers’ ship, with all of his prior life’s memories intact, and he’s bound for Tatooine with a Force-inhibitor collar around his neck, a bomb implanted in his spine, and no way of knowing what state of the Galaxy is in.
Just another day in the life of the Force’s Champion.
Chapter Summary: The time has come for the Light to face the Dark, not the ultimate battle, but a scouting expedition deep into the territory of the Sith.
I love some green veg at lunch. Commercial frozen green veg are hard as rocks and nastily overcooked. Here’s how I bulk prep fresh swiss chard for my lunches
One of the weirdest corners of the Internet is suddenly hard to find on Bing, after the search engine inexplicably started blocking approximately 1.5 million independent websites hosted on Neocities.
Founded in 2013 to archive the "aesthetic awesomeness" of GeoCities websites, Neocities keeps the spirit of the 1990s Internet alive. It lets users design free websites without relying on standardized templates devoid of personality. For hundreds of thousands of people building websites around art, niche fandoms, and special expertise—or simply seeking a place to get a little weird online—Neocities provides a blank canvas that can be endlessly personalized when compared to a Facebook page. Delightedvisitors discovering these sites are more likely to navigate by hovering flashing pointers over a web of spinning GIFs than clicking a hamburger menu or infinitely scrolling.
That's the style of Internet that Kyle Drake, Neocities' founder, strives to maintain. So he was surprised when he noticed that Bing was curiously blocking Neocities sites last summer. At first, the issue seemed resolved by contacting Microsoft, but after receiving more recent reports that users were struggling to log in, Drake discovered that another complete block was implemented in January. Even more concerning, he saw that after delisting the front page, Bing had started pointing users to a copycat site where he was alarmed to learn they were providing their login credentials.
Little kids hosting make-believe tea parties is a fixture of childhood playtime and long presumed to be exclusively a human ability. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University presented evidence in a new paper published in the journal Science that a bonobo named Kanzi was also able to participate in pretending to hold a tea party. For the authors, this suggests that apes are capable of using their imagination just like human toddlers.
“It really is game-changing that their mental lives go beyond the here and now," said co-author Christopher Krupenye. "Imagination has long been seen as a critical element of what it is to be human, but the idea that it may not be exclusive to our species is really transformative. Jane Goodall discovered that chimps make tools, and that led to a change in the definition of what it means to be human, and this, too, really invites us to reconsider what makes us special and what mental life is out there among other creatures."
Per Krupenye et al., by the age of two, human children are able to navigate imaginary scenarios like a tea party, pretending there is real tea present even if the teapot and cups are actually empty. Cognitively speaking, it's an example of secondary representation, because it involves decoupling an imagined or simulated state (pretending there is actual tea in the cup) with the reality (the cup is empty).
A poor night's sleep might leave you feeling like your eyelids have filled with lead—and keeping them open is the ultimate dead lift. But for some, bad sleep brings on eyelids so droopy and floppy that they can do curl ups on their own.
That was the unfortunate case for a 39-year-old woman who sought care at an ophthalmology clinic in Brooklyn, New York. She told the doctors that for six weeks she felt like she had something in her eyes, and they were watery. By the time of her appointment, her eyelids had rolled up, flipping inside-out on their own—and were staying that way. In the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors report her eye-opening case—and its unexpected solution.
(You can see images of her eyelids—flipped and recovered—here. The images may seem graphic to some, but they are not much worse than that kid in elementary school who would flip their eyelids just to freak everyone out for laughs. You know the one.)
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This is a pretty weird idea, but it seems to work. I’ve written many times about aspect of crystallography, but there’s one great big overarching concern in that field that you have to get past: can you even get crystals of your desired compound at all?
Advances in x-ray crystallography and electron diffraction have helped to push the size and availability of useful crystals further and further, and we can now get experimental structures from samples that once would have been considered not even worth looking at. But even very tiny crystals are still crystals: what if you can’t even get that far? That’s what this new paper is addressing, and it fits into a long tradition in the field.
That is, “if you can’t get a crystal of your desired molecule, make a derivative of it where you can”. All sorts of things have been used for this trick - you might be able to make a crystalline salt of an amine compound, for example, or you might esterify a carboxylic acid with some chunky, likely-to-pack-well side chain. On the other side of that transformation, you could go after hydroxyl groups on your target molecule and esterify them to see if something will start growing. But as you can tell even from that (very incomplete!) list, this is something of an art form. You can never really be sure which of these changes might do the trick, and you should never forget that each of the new compounds you’ve produced can be examined in all sorts of solvents and conditions when it comes time to crystallize them. This sort of thing can go on for weeks, months. Years.
The paper linked above is suggesting what might be a more general method. Over the years, it’s been found that metal complexes consisting of three metal atoms arranged with three substituted pyrazole molecules into a planar triangular ring seem to have a strong affinity for complexation with a variety of organic molecules. Many crystalline species can be produced this way, as you can see here. The species with three silver atoms and three bis(trifluoromethyl)pyrazole molecules seems to be especially useful, as shown here. Even so, there are plenty of species out there that don’t quite come through with this method.
So the authors have found that plain ol’ acetyl groups are very good for attracting the metal complex, and show that acetylating recalcitrant molecules turns them into good partners for forming crystalline species. This is demonstrated with a whole range of alcohols, polyols, phenols and polyphenols, and amine species. Some of these are just flat-out liquids at ambient conditions, while others are gummy, gunky, sorta-solids as they stand. A few are actually too volatile for anyone to have successfully crystallized them as well. But they seem to form quite useful crystal species under these conditions, with the acetylations done in situ without isolation, and I’m sure those heavy silver atoms help out quite a bit with the X-ray data. It is rather weird to see orderly crystal structures for things like cyclopentadecanol!
Looking through the supplementary data, I see that the R factors for most of these are around 0.06, give or take, which is not sparkling clean but not horrible. Some of them are down in the 0.03 range, while others are more up around 0.10, which is rather looser. Those latter structures would qualify as “good enough for synthetic organic chemists” but I very much suspect they would not please the real crystallographers out there. But for Cro-Magnons like me (and my tribe), a fuzzy structure usually beats no structure at all, so we’ll take what we can get!
Do you have any guidance on asking for feedback on a job application when you weren’t selected for an interview? I’m aware that I’m unlikely to get a candid answer and perhaps some of my frustration is borne out of feeling like I’m continually applying for jobs where I meet all of the criteria, and can provide examples, but not really getting anywhere.
You can try, but you’re unlikely to get substantive feedback. You’re more likely to get someone willing to give you feedback after an interview because at that point they’ve talked with you one-on-one and there’s more of a connection. Even then, a lot of managers won’t give you any truly meaningful feedback (and sometimes understandably so). Getting it when you haven’t been interviewed is much harder.
Partly that’s because so often the decision came down to “your application was fine but we had a ton of applicants and others were just stronger.” And partly it’s because if the issue was a weakness in your resume or cover letter, most hiring managers won’t want to get into that kind of feedback with someone they don’t even know. You’re most likely to get it if the answer is something very straightforward like “we’re looking for five years of experience with X and you only have one” — but that’s also the kind of thing you don’t generally need them to tell you if their job posting was detailed enough. And even then, they still might not take the time to say it because replying to rejected candidates isn’t usually a high priority relative to other things the hiring manager is juggling.
You’re better off asking for feedback from people in your network who work in your field at a more senior level. Ask if they’d be willing to look over your application materials and see if they spot ways you can strengthen them. Those are people who already have a connection with you, so they’re more likely to offer something helpful.
Also — if this doesn’t apply to you I apologize, but more than 95% of the time when someone tells me they’re having trouble getting interviews and I ask to see their resume and cover letter, they haven’t done the stuff I’ve listed here (even when they tell me they’ve read it). So that’s one place you could start.
There is very little functional difference between iOS and Android these days. The systems could integrate quite well if it weren't for the way companies prioritize lock-in over compatibility. At least in the realm of file sharing, Google is working to fix that. After adding basic AirDrop support to Pixel 10 devices last year, the company says we can look forward to seeing it on many more phones this year.
At present, the only Android phones that can initiate an AirDrop session with Apple devices are Google's latest Pixel 10 devices. When Google announced this upgrade, it vaguely suggested that more developments would come, and it now looks like we'll see more AirDrop support soon.
According to Android Authority, Google is planning a big AirDrop expansion in 2026. During an event at the company's Taipei office, Eric Kay, Google's VP of engineering for Android, laid out the path ahead.
On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Chief Marketing Officer Kate Rouch complained on X after rival AI lab Anthropic released four commercials, two of which will run during the Super Bowl on Sunday, mocking the idea of including ads in AI chatbot conversations. Anthropic's campaign seemingly touched a nerve at OpenAI just weeks after the ChatGPT maker began testing ads in a lower-cost tier of its chatbot.
Altman called Anthropic's ads "clearly dishonest," accused the company of being "authoritarian," and said it "serves an expensive product to rich people," while Rouch wrote, "Real betrayal isn't ads. It's control."
Anthropic's four commercials, part of a campaign called "A Time and a Place," each open with a single word splashed across the screen: "Betrayal," "Violation," "Deception," and "Treachery." They depict scenarios where a person asks a human stand-in for an AI chatbot for personal advice, only to get blindsided by a product pitch.
2025 was a busy year for AO3! The site continued to see rising traffic, with Communicationspublishing an update on AO3 statistics from 2020-2025. In December, Support received 3,589 tickets, totaling to over 40,000 tickets received in 2025, an all-time high. Meanwhile, Policy & Abuse (PAC) received 6,357 tickets in December, totaling approximately 47,500 tickets in 2025. Check out PAC's pie chart for more details.
Pie chart of the approximately 47,500 Policy & Abuse tickets submitted in 2025, divided by type of complaint. These categories reflect the subject of the complaint, and (with the exception of Offensive Content), do not indicate whether the report was upheld or rejected.
In the first half of January, User Response Translation translated or betaed 32 ticket requests from Support and PAC.
In December, Tag Wrangling wrangled approximately 598,000 tags, or around 1,300 tags per volunteer. In total, they wrangled approximately 4,944,000 tags in 2025. They also continued work on handling "No Fandom" additional tags, publishing December and January news posts detailing recent changes. In total, Tag Wrangling published nine "No Fandom"-related news posts in 2025 covering around 399 new canonical "No Fandom" additional tags.
In January, Tag Wrangling updated their Fandom Tag Metatag guidelines, including clarifying when a fandom metatag should be made and when to merge closely related fandoms into one fandom tag. Check out the news post detailing the new policy.
As part of International Volunteers Day (IVD) 2025, Communications collected and batched answers to the IVD Q&A by committee, resulting in five committee-specific news posts highlighting Communications, Support, Tag Wrangling, Translation, and Volunteers & Recruiting. Answers across committees, along with additional responses not featured in the news posts, have been compiled in a separate AO3 work.
III. ELSEWHERE AT THE OTW
Fanlore ran an editing chat to close out 2025, and it was a lot of fun! They also began preparing for their annual IFD Fanlore Challenge and Femslash February event! Keep an eye on their Bluesky, Twitter/X, and Tumblr for announcements.
Legal answered many internal and external questions this month.
In January, Communications' Fanhackers wrote about the Transformative Approaches to Fan Identity, and they began a multi-post survey of acafannish research and publishing resources.
IV. GOVERNANCE
In December, Board announced the resignations of two directors: Kathryn Solderholm and Erica Frank. We would like to thank Erica and Kathryn for their service as members of the Board, and wish them all the best in their future endeavours with the OTW.
In January, Board finalized and approved the OTW Procurement & Purchasing Policy. They and the Board Assistants Team (BAT) organised the first quarter of 2026 public Board meeting on January 18 which had 54 attendees. Minutes of this meeting will be available soon on the OTW website. Elsewhere, Board and BAT continued work on document review and archiving board statements, Code of Conduct tasks in conjunction with Organizational Culture Roadmap, and ongoing projects for mental health resources for volunteers, scheduling tools, public meeting best practices and volunteer retention in BAT. BAT also updated their OTW website committee page.
Organizational Culture Roadmap finalized a confidentiality policy in preparation for upcoming external recruitment.
V. OUR VOLUNTEERS
In December, Volunteers & Recruiting thanked all OTW volunteers on International Volunteer Day with their organization-wide email and graphics campaign. In January, they ran recruitment for Open Doors.
From November 22 to January 23, Volunteers & Recruiting received 355 new requests, and completed 378, leaving them with 52 open requests (including induction and removal tasks listed below). As of January 23, 2025, the OTW has 1,013 volunteers. \o/ Recent personnel movements are listed below.
New Subcommittee Leads/Workgroup Heads: Eevee (Internal Complaint and Conflict Resolution Lead) and megidola (Organizational Culture Roadmap Workgroup Head) New AO3 Documentation Volunteers: Lulu S (Chair Trainee) New Fanlore Volunteers: Elfie, Konsta Morales, Watts, and 1 other Graphic Designer New Open Doors Volunteers: Addiebees, AviLine, feelyx, LeighR, Marie K, meservey66, MetaKass, miffmiff, Mort, pinkconstellations, SleepyJane, Spit, StormySea, Truendz, Vail, and 11 other Import Assistants New Policy & Abuse Volunteers: megidola (Supervisor) and 1 Chair Track Volunteer New Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Chelsea Cheyanne, inspiredstork, Sanity, will, and Yrindor (Supervisors) New Translation Volunteers: Rhine and 1 other Chair Trainee; Arushi, athursdayschild, Eirinar, Linarii, Mira8, Niki K, Phoebe B, Pi, Rita P, and 12 other Translators New TWC Volunteers: Fiona M, Yumi, and 3 other Layout Editors; and 2 Outreach and Communications Editors New User Response Translation Volunteers: Eki, f0f8ff, HARRitte, Jules R, Laus, PanPan, rosings, zoy zauce, and 3 other Translators
Departing Directors: Erica Frank and Kathryn Soderholm Departing Committee Chairs: 1 Communications Chair and 1 Elections Chair Departing BAT Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Departing Communications Volunteers: KW Ukuku (TikTok Moderator), Lori P (Graphics Volunteer), 1 Fanhacker Volunteer, and 1 Social Media Moderator Departing Communications News Post Moderation Volunteers: 1 News Post Moderator Departing Development & Membership Volunteers: 1 Graphic Designer, 2 Membership Data Specialists, and 2 Volunteers Departing Fanlore Volunteers: 1 Discord Moderator, 1 Outreach Analyst, and 1 Policy & Admin Departing Open Doors Volunteers: Pelagia and 1 other Administrative Volunteer, Wynne (Import Assistant), and 1 FCPP Intern Departing Policy & Abuse Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Departing Strategic Planning Volunteers: 1 Volunteer Departing Support Volunteers: Nary and 22 other Volunteers Departing Tag Wrangling Volunteers: Nary and 1 other Supervisor; Asas Carmesins, Bruno, Eevee, lianneder, Lily_Haydee_Lohdisse, McBangle, Sayornis, Tea Huimyni, and 10 other Wranglers Departing Translation Volunteers: Teelee (Task Assistant); Illiterations and 4 Translators Departing TWC Volunteers: Melanie Kohnen (Review Editor); Courtney Lazore and 1 other Proofreader; and 1 Symposium Editor Departing User Response Translation Volunteers: 1 Translator Departing Volunteers & Recruiting Volunteers: 1 Senior Volunteer and 2 Volunteers
For more information about our committees and their regular activities, you can refer to the committee pages on our website.
The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.
Trump’s border-czar takeover does little to calm Minneapolis tensions: ‘The agenda is still the same’ Experts say Tom Homan’s charge, replacing Greg Bovino’s aggressive tactics, may change the tone, but not the mission Shrai Popat in Minneapolis https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/05/tom-homan-minnesota-gregory-bovino
Larson, Ruth. 1997. “Sex and Civility in a 17th-Century Dialogue: L’Escole des filles” in Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, no. 47: 497-514.
This article examines the 17th century pornographic text L’Escole des filles (School for girls) not only as a sexual dialogue but as a satire (or at least reflection) of the fashion for pedagogical texts aimed at women and girls. This is illustrated (literally) by the frontispiece image in the 1668 edition, which depicts figures representing the two women in the dialogue studying a copy of the book itself in an academic setting.
The article begins with a brief publication history. The first edition published in France in 1655 was immediately banned, but Dutch editions soon supplied the market and the work was widely distributed across Europe. Authorship has been hotly debated and most critical studies have focused on it as a pioneering work of pornography—a focus dating to 18th century discourse about the book. Occasional discussions have raised the theme appearing in this article: interpreting it as a “sex manual” or perhaps a “seduction manual,” situated within a tradition of works of moral education for women (and their satires, as with Molière’s L’Ecole des femmes, published 1660).
This emerging tradition of pedagogical works reflects contrasting shifts: printed educational works (in the vernacular) made their subjects accessible to a broad range of the population, while also undermining the expectation of individual knowledge and expertise. In this specific case, rather than sexual education being something one received from family and neighbors, it became a type of esoteric knowledge only transmissible by “experts.”
Another contradiction comes from the (almost certain) male authorship of the text contrasted with the internal framing of the content as passed from one woman to another. Some scholars discussing this point make rather tenuous claims for a “tradition” of considering women to be the experts in erotic arts in the pre-modern world. Larson suggests instead that the image of the “female sexual pedagogue” did exist, but as an invention of male authors. The dynamics of textual production mean that, to the extent that there was a tradition of women as sexual teachers, it would have been an oral tradition.
As noted previously, the other relevant tradition was that of manuals of moral and social education which had become prevalent in the 17th century. These manuals were typically created for (or one might say, aimed at) a female audience as part of the program of controlling and shaping women’s behavior. This tradition had existed for at least a century at the time L’Escole des filles was published, starting with works such as Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, which aimed to define standards and structures of polite and refined behavior. In contrast to earlier genres of instruction that focused on biographies and stories, these were more prescriptive and organized more as a reference work with indexes and descriptive headings.
The Counter-Reformation and its focus on feminine moral instruction was a significant driver in this fashion, but the contents have significant secular focus. The books themselves might emphasize the dangers of human teacher as contrasted with a text that could be reviewed for appropriateness and approved prior to dissemination.
The tradition of sexual texts also contributed to the format and nature of L’Escole des filles. Aretino’s 16th century Ragionamenti (dialogues) adapted an existing tradition of dialogue-based exposition to sexual topics, using discussion between female characters. The best-known sexual text had been versions of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, presenting itself as instruction in seduction and successful sexual relationships. Both works were, at heart, cynical satires presenting women as focused on how to exploit men sexually for their own advantage (with some nods to the economic factors that inspired such an attitude). Both were primarily satirizing social conditions, with the sexual aspects as the medium of that critique. In contrast, L’Escole des filles primarily satirizes the process of educational instruction, with the sexual content presented as titillation for the reader, where earlier works had framed sex as a tool rather than an experience. Where Aretino treats sex itself cynically, L’Escole emphasizes the importance of sexual pleasure and the ability to both experience and provide it.
There is a constant tension in L’Escole between orality and textuality. It is both: a written text representing an interactive dialogue. Initially structured as a casual conversation between the ingenue and her experienced mentor about an upcoming marriage, it moves on to a more structured presentation of information, such as a catalog of terminology for sexual organs and acts. In this structure, it resembles philosophical dialogues. The success of this instruction is manifest, not simply in the ingenue’s new sexual knowledge (and practice), but in her overall increase in social fluency and self-confidence.
Returning to the topic of L’Escole as a “textbook,” Larson details the structural elements of the text and how it “fragments” the contents in to modules that might be studied or reviewed as needed, made easier by a detailed index of topics. The author’s preface is a parody of similar introductions in educational manuals.
The article ends with an anecdote potentially tying together the traditions of conduct and sex manuals more closely. One of the accused authors of the text was a sometime tenant of the widow of the author of the first French conduct manual. Coincidence or synergy?
I had a birthday! It was low key (Mum is still not up for even small adventures) but involved a lot of eating. I had lunch with Dad, and then dinner with S before choir although I was still so full I managed half a starter and a bit of her dessert. Then choir, and we had some cookies in the break. Tomorrow I have post-swimming coffee and cake before work and then office snacks (three flavours of interesting cheese crackers! I thought that was more fun than cake).
Nearly everyone gave me vouchers as per my request and I have so many Steam vouchers now. That will be fun for when my wishlist items go on good sales! Also my dad gave me a scented candle but that was more of a "please get rid of this thing I don't want" than a present as such :D It appears to be a branded corporate gift from his old work, but it smells OK and my candle order has been "on its way" from the parcel facility less than twenty miles away for ten days now, so I'll take it.
Choir was also interesting because it was the first rehearsal of the second conductor candidate we're auditioning. So far I like him - probably better than the first one, although he was OK - but we'll see how it goes. I had demanded that S make sure I was sung happy birthday (before we realised it was the new guy's first night!) but she managed to make it happen anyway. Deeply mortifying in the moment, but also I really wanted it to happen! It was the 22nd anniversary of S and I joining the chorus (no prizes for guessing why I can remember exactly what date it was...) and we've been friends ever since.
Here are three recent success stories submitted by readers.
1. A successful raise request
I wanted to share that I used your advice for asking for a raise to successfully increase my salary. I presented salary surveys from nonprofit industry groups and local job postings for similar positions that showed my old salary was low compared to current listings in my metro area. In the end, I received a 9% raise, which I feel pretty good about. It isn’t as much as I hoped, but my supervisor did acknowledge it was the most they could give me at this time and that at first the proposed raise from HR was 6%.
2. A successful salary negotiation
This is not me but my Gen Z daughter. She works in a field that is renown for contract work — and she just recently was able to secure a full-time, benefitted position in a field she loves. They offered her $X, which she was over the moon for, having been considerably underpaid in a prior teaching job. Figuring she might be able to eke out a bit more, she called her cousin (who worked in the field) and a career coach who has been wonderful at providing some pro bono assistance, and then called the hiring manager. She asked if there was any wiggle room in the salary. The hiring manager asked her what she was thinking and so she provided a range. The hiring manager replied with, “How about $Y?” This was higher than the range she had named and 12% higher than what she was initially offered. Now she’s really over the moon. It makes one wonder if there was even more wiggle room in that number, but that’s okay. She is going to be doing something she loves and is also now not afraid of asking for what she wants. It confirms the saying that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
3. A successful skip-level meeting
I changed roles in my organization in October. In December, the CIO sent a divisional all-hands email inviting all new joiners to a morning tea for welcome and networking.
I wasn’t able to attend due to a preexisting health appointment. I emailed the CIO’s PA to apologize for missing it, and I channelled my inner-AAM hard: “I’d hoped to introduce myself to [CIO] as I know they were tracking a major incident two weeks ago that I was the technical lead for resolving.”
The PA replied that the CIO would like to meet with me and offered a 15-minute slot in January.
Because I’m in a large international organization, the CIO is my skip-level’s skip-level. In preparation, I read everything you’ve ever advised your readers about making the most of a skip-level meeting.
I had a good — and fast! 90 seconds! — answer ready to “Tell me about what you do here and what you did before.”
I asked them if they were curious about a ground-level view of the incident. They said no, in a friendly way, so I instantly pivoted to, “What’s front of mind for you for this quarter and this year?”
They spent 10 minutes on five major initiatives and paused each time to invite comment. I correctly read the room and gave one or at most two sentences for each. I hit the jackpot with one, where the CIO paused and said, “Interesting that you saw that right away. Most of my team didn’t.”
We finished in 13 minutes, and they congratulated me for “knowing how to speak with a CIO”. :) They also gave me two names of people who report to them that they wanted me to meet.
Will anything come of it? Who knows? I don’t even really care — it was great practice, and I couldn’t have done it without your excellent advice. Thank you!
Back in 2022, astronomers were puzzled by a so-called “tidal disruption event” (TDE), dubbed AT2018hyz, that had faded when it was first noticed three years earlier, only to unexpectedly reanimate and burp out extremely bright radio waves. University of Oregon astrophysicist Yvette Cendes, a co-author of that 2022 paper, dubbed the black hole “Jetty McJetface” (a nod to the 2016 online British competition to name a research vessel Boaty McBoatface).
Astronomers have continued to monitor it ever since. Far from fading again, the TDE has grown 50 times brighter, and that brightness continues to increase. The black hole's energy emission might not peak until 2027, according to a new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal.
As we've previously discussed, it’s a popular misconception that black holes behave like cosmic vacuum cleaners, ravenously sucking up any matter in their surroundings. In reality, only stuff that passes beyond the event horizon—including light—is swallowed up and can’t escape, although black holes are also messy eaters. That means that part of an object’s matter is actually ejected out in a powerful jet.
The iPhone is going orbital, and this time it will be allowed to hang around for a while.
On Wednesday night, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman revealed that the Crew-12 and Artemis II astronauts will be allowed to bring iPhones and other modern smartphones into orbit and beyond.
"NASA astronauts will soon fly with the latest smartphones, beginning with Crew-12 and Artemis II," Isaacman wrote on X. "We are giving our crews the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and video with the world."
Electric vehicle enthusiasts are probably right to feel a little disheartened about the state of the United States' transition to EVs. But they should take heart that our region is an outlier. The other side of the Atlantic still seems relatively positive about the whole idea, even as Europe's car market recovers more slowly from the pandemic than the rest of the world. Last year, overall vehicle sales in Europe barely ticked up, rising 2.2 percent from 2024. EV sales, meanwhile, increased by 29 percent to 2,572,491 units, bringing market share to an impressive 19.5 percent.
That's according to data from automotive analyst JATO Dynamics, which finds that the big winner has been Volkswagen. Last year, its EVs outsold those from Tesla for the first time as sales of VW's electric offering grew by 56 percent, while Tesla's shrank by 27 percent.
To put that into concrete numbers, VW sold 274,278 EVs to Tesla's 236,357. And that's just the VW brand itself—the automaker also owns Skoda (in 4th place, with 171,703 sales), Audi (5th place, 153,845 sales), Cupra (15th place, 79,269 sales), and Porsche (21st place, 32,715 sales). Not a bad effort, considering just over a decade has passed since VW's Dieselgate scandal.
Just in time for Valentine's Day, fancake's theme for February is Inept in Love! This round is for all those dingdongs who just do not know what they're doing when it comes to romance or even expressing their feelings for a best friend or family member.
If you have any questions about this theme, or the comm, come talk to me!
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nanila
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The paper linked above is suggesting what might be a more general method. Over the years, it’s been found that metal complexes consisting of three metal atoms arranged with three substituted pyrazole molecules into a planar triangular ring seem to have a strong affinity for complexation with a variety of organic molecules. Many crystalline species can be produced this way, as you can see 
