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280 - The Story of Hanukkah

Dec. 15th, 2025 05:00 am
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What is more comforting than a familiar story?

Weather: "Ezewa" by Kate Odulukwe⁠⁠

The voice of Deb is Meg Bashwiner

Original episode art by Jessica Hayworth

Episode transcripts

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Music: Disparition

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Written by Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor & Brie Williams

Narrated by Cecil Baldwin

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The Emperor's Caretaker 01

Dec. 15th, 2025 12:33 am
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] book_love
The Emperor's Caretaker 01 by Haruki Yoshimura

The first in a series, mostly set-up apparently.

Read more... )

Winter 2025 Guessing Post!

Dec. 14th, 2025 11:49 pm
holmesticemods: (Default)
[personal profile] holmesticemods posting in [community profile] holmestice
Thank you so much for another wonderful round of Holmestice! The mods want to say THANK YOU to all the creators who joined us this round. Being in this community with you is a joy and an honour.

Reveals and the Master List go up on December 21 (Baker Island time). Until then, please enjoy and comment on all the lovely fanworks. (If you haven't thanked your creator for your own gift yet, please do!) Creators, please do NOT respond to Dreamwidth comments with your name attached or post your works elsewhere on the Internet until reveals go up in the community. You may of course reply to comments on AO3, which preserves your anonymity.

Meanwhile, stay tuned: treats are coming up! We have a bumper crop this round! For anyone thinking of making a treat, we will accept treats until reveals, so if there's a prompt that inspires you, please have at it! Just use the regular submission guidelines and send your headers to holmesticemods@gmail.com.

If you'd like to guess who created what in this round, here's a list of all the contributors for the main gifts. (You'll have to put in some extra work to guess the treat-makers!) Go ahead and take a guess! It's all in good fun.

Contributors )

Go forth and leave love for your fellow Holmestice artists, authors, podficcers, and vidders! See you again on the 21st, when we reveal who made what!
sovay: (Viktor & Mordecai)
[personal profile] sovay
For the first night of Hanukkah, my mother accompanied me to None Shall Escape (1944) at the Harvard Film Archive. It snowed into the late afternoon, silver-dusting the unsanded streets. The wind chill feels like zero Fahrenheit. [personal profile] spatch and I lit the first night's candle for strength.
full_metal_ox: A gold Chinese Metal Ox zodiac charm. (Default)
[personal profile] full_metal_ox posting in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: Mo Dao Zu Shi
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Lan Xichen & Lan Wangji; Lan Xichen & Wei Wuxian; background Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian; background past Lan Xichen/Jin Guangyao; Lan Xichen, Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian, Jin Guangyao (in past anecdote)
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 2,495
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply, eating one’s feelings, food as mnemonic trigger, innuendo, mourning, snarky food criticism
Creator Tags: Post-Canon, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Xichen Week 2020
Creator Links: (AO3) [archiveofourown.org profile] dragonofeternal, (Dreamwidth) [personal profile] dragonofeternal, (Tumblr) [tumblr.com profile] dragonofeternal

Theme: Amnesty, Food & Cooking, Family, Post-Canon, Trauma & Recovery

Summary: Food can do more than just feed- it nurtures the soul and the bonds between people.
In which Lan Xichen briefly leaves his seclusion to taste Wei Wuxian's cooking and awakens warm memories of meals long passed.


Author’s Notes: For [archiveofourown.org profile] SetsuntaMew.

<3 For my lovely wife, who inspired this when we talking Xichen feels over spicy Korean BBQ.


Reccer's Notes: When Lan Wangji checks up on Lan Xichen in his seclusion, Wei Wuxian comes along—bringing his idea of a care package. Despite Wangji’s apprehension, the Fires Of Yunmeng Cooking prove just the thing to help his despondent brother come to terms with his complicated feelings about fellow Yunmeng boy Jin Guangyao—prompting memories of their adventures (and meals) together.

(An added bit of poignancy is that Lan Xichen is being served this bittersweet nostalgia by a man who now bears Jin Guangyao a family resemblance.)

Fanwork Links:
The Spice of Life by [archiveofourown.org profile] dragonofeternal
Collections: Lan Huan Protection Squad.
holmesticemods: (Default)
[personal profile] holmesticemods posting in [community profile] holmestice
Title: Potential for Friends
Recipient: Rabidsamfan
Author: REDACTED
Verse: Books: Doyle - Canon(Directly after A Study in Scarlet)
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, mentions of Jefferson Hope, Stamford, and Victor Trevor, no established relationships or pairings
Rating: T
Warnings: PTSD, drug usage(Smoking 'ship's'), verbal arguments, Nightmares
Summary: After A Study in Scarlet, Holmes observes Watson, and tries to reconcile with the fact that Watson may have just worked past his defenses… and just how he truly feels about this development of having a friend. And yet, after a fight, Holmes realizes just how much Watson carries-and why, to Holmes, having Watson around baffles him. But... maybe that's not a bad thing?


Read on Ao3: Potential for Friends
holmesticemods: (Default)
[personal profile] holmesticemods posting in [community profile] holmestice
Title: Stranger Than Kindness
Recipient: periferal/grossferatu
Author: REDACTED
Verse: Sherlock Holmes & the Servants of Hell - Paul Kane
Characters/Pairings: Holmes/Watson, past Watson/Mary, implied past queerplatonic Holmes/Moriarty
Rating: M
Warnings: BDSM, angst, aging, aftermath of trauma
Summary: After the events of Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell, is there even enough left of Holmes and Watson to live out their remaining years in relative bliss? Yes, in a certain strange way.

Note: Sherlock Holmes & the Servants of Hell is a crossover with Clive Barker's Hellraiser universe, written by an editor and horror historian who specializes in it (and blurbed by Barker himself)


Read on Ao3: Stranger Than Kindness

Nihotupu dam, early summer

Dec. 15th, 2025 01:42 pm
mific: (A rainbow)
[personal profile] mific posting in [community profile] common_nature
I drove out to my local reservoir to charge my car battery and check the water levels after the unusually hot spring we've had (global warming and La Niña). It wasn't too bad as despite the heat we've also had bouts of heavy rain. The Watercare site says the local dams are at 85% of usual levels.

pics here )

in lieu...

Dec. 14th, 2025 05:57 pm
senmut: an owl that is quite large sitting on a roof (Default)
[personal profile] senmut
... of the misc.exhausted.me, I am going to offer a GOOD vaccination tale. As I see so many posts saying "yes it sucks but do it anyway", I want to offer the counter of "sometimes it does go fine".

I did Shingles/Flu/Covid in the fall, before Halloween, I think. NB: I 'd had covid for the first time this past winter, and it may have mitigated the vax some, or my body is finally adapting to it. I have had flu-like symptoms each time except the very first two shots, but! This time. With the trio of shots given on Friday evening, I had about a four hour window the next day, 10-ish hours later, of mild aches and NOTHING else.

Fast forward to this week. Shingles #2, and like I said, I'd seen so many people saying if the first one doesn't knock you low, the second will, and many react to both. Folks, my arm is still sore like I got TDaP, but I have had no aches, no fever, no lethargy. Sometimes, your body looks at the roadmap it just got handed, says okay, and just adds the necessary warning signs.

If you are over 50 (in the USA), consider getting it. I've known people with Shingles. YOU DO NOT WANT IT. Get vaxxed. And remember, every immune system is different, so don't assume you will have a bad time.

Short TV show review: Andor

Dec. 14th, 2025 11:11 pm
dhampyresa: (A most terrible case of the Star Wars)
[personal profile] dhampyresa
I really enjoyed watching Andor, overall. I did think there were a few places where the pacing dragged a bit and it wasn't as mindblowingly great as the hype made it sound like it would be, but it was still very good! The bits on Ghorman were kind of annoying because the Ghor language sounds so much like French but isn't French, I felt like I was taking crazy pills hahaha. Favourite episode was either the prison break or the Kleya flashbacks episode. I agressively Did Not Care about Syril or his mother, but every other character was at least interesting. I love Cassian, Vel and Cinta, but I think Kleya might be my favourite. I want to rewatch Rogue One, now.

(no subject)

Dec. 14th, 2025 04:38 pm
watersword: Keira Knightley, in Pride and Prejudice (2007), turning her head away from the viewer, the word "elizabeth" written near (Default)
[personal profile] watersword

On my way out the door to a vigil for last night's mass casualty incident; today is also the thirteenth anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, and there was an antisemitic mass shooting in Bondi Beach, Australia yesterday.

I do not know how I am going to get through this vigil and come home and light my chanukiyah, with its engraving, More life. The great work begins.

ETA: Ran into some coworkers at the extremely well-attended vigil and they came home with me to light the chanukiyah, and that helped.

Disadvent 14

Dec. 14th, 2025 02:24 pm
psocoptera: ink drawing of celtic knot (Default)
[personal profile] psocoptera
Yesterday was all, uh, advent and no disadvent - Christmas shopping including tree but also groceries and school supplies and picture wire and replacing lost winter gear and three boxes of dish detergent from the only store around that still carries a dish detergent I don't hate (it's all pods, pods, pods now, and I guess I've become the dad from Strictly Ballroom, "it's all video, video, video". anyways.).

Today, however, we put up lights on the tree and in the living room and also got rid of all the spare bulbs and fuses and warnings/instructions for lights we don't have any more, and also threw out two broken strings of outdoor lights that were in the garage. And also we had two strings of lights we'd never used because the colors were creepy and unpleasant (a blue and a purple, which I had bought as colors of holiday lights I like in general, but these weren't good implementations) and it occurred to me that I could send them with Q to see if the LARP people had any use for them, as people who sometimes want creepy lighting effects on purpose, as I have seen in some event photos. He has been instructed to emphasize that I don't want them back.
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Posted by adamg

A disgusted resident files a 311 complaint about the apres-snow situation at K and East 7th streets in South Boston:

Moron entitled clowns putting cones out never even shoveled make it stop please these people are comedy.

Neighborhoods: 
holmesticemods: (Default)
[personal profile] holmesticemods posting in [community profile] holmestice
Title: Lost without You
Recipient: [personal profile] helloliriels
Artist/Vidder: REDACTED
Verse: Sherlock BBC
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Rating: G
Warnings: light angst
Summary: There are things Sherlock and John are willing to lose but others they won't budge.

Read more... )

We got just enough snow ...

Dec. 14th, 2025 07:32 pm
[syndicated profile] universal_hub_feed

Posted by adamg

Pair of snow mice on Comm. Ave.

Somebody was able to scoop up enough snow to create a pair of snowmice on Commonwealth Avenue near Allston Street in Allston, and a roving UHub photographer stopped long enough to snap their picture.

Topics: 
Neighborhoods: 
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Posted by adamg

A Dorchester man faces a series of charges - and is being held in lieu of $10,000 bail - for stealing Mercedes sedans, a Range Rover, and, for some reason, a RAV-4, out of garages from the Common to Seaport Boulevard in August and September, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Anthony Crumbley, 29, was arraigned twice last week - first in Boston Municipal Court for stealing several cars, then in Dorchester Municipal Court on charges that when a cop spotted him on Woodrow Avenue near Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester in one of the stolen vehicles, he refused to stop and instead "shifted into reverse and sped up, dragging the officer and causing injury to their hand, forearm, and leg" and then hit two cars as he sped away, the DA's office reports.

Between the two courts, he was charged with intent to commit a felony, larceny from a building, several counts of larceny of a motor vehicle, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, attaching number plates and malicious destruction of property over $1,200, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, failure to stop for police, reckless operation of a motor vehicle, leaving the scene of personal injury, attaching number plates, and two counts of leaving the scene of property damage.

He will face additional charges in South Boston Municipal Court, the DA's office adds.

Police did not have to search hard to find him because he was already locked up in the Suffolk County jail in lieu of $500 bail on charges he and a pal smashed a guy in the head with a bottle during a robbery at Washington and Northampton streets in Roxbury on Oct. 23, court records show. 

According to the DA's office, Crumbley's joy-riding theft spree started Aug. 20, when he got into a black Mercedes S-class parked in the Boston Common Garage - with the key fob inside - and drove up and away. On Aug. 25, he drove the Mercedes to Congress Street, parked, walked into the Atlantic Wharf Garage, then got into somebody's RAV-4 and drove away in it, the DA's office says, adding police recovered the RAV-4 on Washington Street in Jamaica Plain the next day.

On Sept. 8, Crumbley got up a bit early, because he stole a black Mercedes C300 around 4:59 a.m. out of a garage on Seaport Boulevard in the Seaport, the DA's office says.

On Sept. 11, the saga continued when Crumbley drove the C300 to the Atlantic Wharf Garage - where an attendant recognized him - "discarding multiple bags from the car" until he parked, went into a locked garage office and stole a Samsung tablet. He then got back into the C300 and drove away before police, summoned by the attendant, could arrive, the DA's office says.

Around 6:16 pm. that day:

An officer located the Mercedes on Woodrow Avenue [in Dorchester] and approached the vehicle. As the officer placed their hand on the mirror, the operator shifted into reverse and sped up, dragging the officer and causing injury to their hand, forearm, and leg. The vehicle fled onto Blue Hill Avenue, hitting two cars.

But in the meantime, on the afternoon of Sept. 16, Crumbley entered the garage at 125 High St., found a Range Rover to his liking and then, when he got to the exit, told the attendant he had lost his ticket:

While the attendant went into their office to retrieve the vehicle's information, Crumbley sped up and drove through the gate, exiting the garage and causing damage. The attendant provided officers with a description of the operator of the Range Rover that matched Crumbley, as well as security footage that showed Crumbley entering the garage shortly before the incident.

The DA's office continues:

On September 19, Boston police located the Range Rover parked in front of 147 Norfolk Street. As officers approached the vehicle, the driver accelerated and fled, driving onto the sidewalk and nearly colliding with police cruisers. Later the same day, around 9:07 p.m., a 911 caller reported a broken-down Range Rover with no registration attached and flashing headlights. Officers spoke to the driver, who identified themself as Anthony Crumbley. Crumbley told officers the Range Rover belonged to a friend.

Officers could not locate the provided name in the RMV database and concluded with further investigation that the vehicle was the Range Rover stolen from the 125 High Street garage. Crumbley was taken into custody on charges of receiving stolen property.

Additional confirmation on the identity of the one-man car-theft ring came after Oct. 6, when the owner of the Mercedes in which Crumbley allegedly dragged the cop on Woodrow Avenue retrieved his car and found a letter from an animal hospital addressed to Anthony Crumbley, the DA's office reports.

Innocent, etc.

Topics: 

Book review: Martyr!

Dec. 14th, 2025 10:50 am
rocky41_7: (Default)
[personal profile] rocky41_7 posting in [community profile] booknook
Title: Martyr!
Author: Kaveh Akbar
Genre: Fiction, literary

It took over a month for my hold on this book to come up, but Friday night I finished Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. If you look into online book recommendations like on New York Times or NPR, you've probably seen this title come up. This book is about a young poet who sobers up after years of severe addiction and is now looking for meaning and purpose.

Martyr! is a beautiful book about the very human search for meaning in our lives, but it also is not afraid to shy away from the ugliness of that search. It juxtaposes eloquently-worded paragraphs of generational grief with Cyrus waking up having pissed the bed because he went to sleep so drunk the night before. Neither of these things cancels the other out. 

Everyone in Martyr! is flawed, often deeply, but they're all also very real, and they're trying their best; they aren't trying to hurt anyone, but they cause hurt anyway, and then they and those around them just have to deal with that. Martyr! weighs the search for personal meaning against the duty owed to others and doesn't come up with a clean answer. What responsibility did Orkideh have to her family as opposed to herself? What responsibility did Ali have to Cyrus as opposed to himself? What responsibility does Cyrus have to Zee, as opposed to his search for a meaningful death? 

Cyrus' story is mainly the post-sobriety story: He's doing what he's supposed to, he's not drinking or doing drugs, he's going to his AA meetings, he's working (after a fashion)...and what's the reward? He still can't sleep at night and he feels directionless and alone and now he doesn't even have the ecstasy of a good high to look forward to. This is the "so what now?" part of the sobriety journey.

It's also in many ways a family story. Cyrus lost his mother when he was young and his father shortly after he left for college, and he spends the book trying to reckon with these things and with the people his parents were. Roya is the mother Cyrus never knew, whose shape he could only vaguely sketch out from his father's grief and his unstable uncle's recollections. Ali is the father who supported Cyrus in all practical ways, and sacrificed mightily to do it, but did not really have the emotional bandwidth to be there for his son. And there are parallels between Cyrus and Roya arising later in the book that tugged quite hard on my heartstrings, but I won't spoil anything here.

Cyrus wants to find meaning, but seems only able to grasp it in the idea of a meaningful death--hence his obsession with martyrs. The idea of a life with meaning seems beyond him. He struggles throughout the book with this and with the people trying to suggest that dying is not the only way to have lived. 

I really enjoyed this book and I think it deserves the praise it's gotten. I've tried to sum up here what the book is "about," but it's a story driven by emotion more than plot. It's Cyrus' journey and his steps and stumbles along the way, and I think Akbar did a wonderful job with it.
squidgestatus: (Default)
[personal profile] squidgestatus
We're having an unexpected issue with our SquidgeWorld machine, and are actively working the issue. We hope to be back up asap. No current ETA.

Definitely a French Toast day

Dec. 14th, 2025 03:20 pm
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Posted by adamg

French toast and jam

Y2000k reports she was a bit surprised by the snow this morning, but no matter, she was ready.

Topics: 
Free tagging: 

(no subject)

Dec. 14th, 2025 10:37 am
skygiants: Nellie Bly walking a tightrope among the stars (bravely trotted)
[personal profile] skygiants
On a lighter Parisian note, I read my first Katherine Rundell book, Rooftoppers, which I would have ADORED at age ten but also found extremely fun at age forty!

The heroine of Rooftoppers is orphan Sophie, found floating in a cello case the English Channel after a terrible shipwreck and adopted by a charming eccentric named Charles who raises her on Shakespeare and Free Spirited Inquiry. Unfortunately the English authorities do not approve of children being raised on Shakespeare and Free Spirited Inquiry, so when they threaten to remove Sophie to an orphanage, Charles and Sophie buy themselves time by fleeing to Paris in an attempt to track down traces of Sophie's parentage.

Sophie is stubbornly convinced she might have a mother somewhere out there who survived the shipwreck! Charles is less convinced, but willing to be supportive. On account of the Authorities, however, Charles advises Sophie to stay in the hotel while he pursues the investigation -- but Sophie will not be confined! So she starts pursuing her own investigations via the hotel roof, where she rapidly collides with Matteo, an extremely feral child who claims ownership of the Paris roofs and Does Not Want want Sophie intruding.

But of course eventually Sophie wins Matteo over and is welcomed into the world of the Rooftoppers, Parisian children who have fled from orphanages in favor of leaping from spire to steeple, stealing scraps and shooting pigeons (but also sometimes befriending the pigeons) and generally making a self-sufficient sort of life for themselves in the Most Scenic Surroundings in the World. The book makes it quite clear that the Rooftoppers are often cold and hungry and smelly and the whole thing is no bed of roses, while nonetheless fully and joyously indulging in the tropey delight of secret! hyper-competent! child! rooftop! society!!

The book as a whole strikes a lovely tonal balance just on the edge of fairy tale -- everything is very technically plausible and nothing is actually magic, but also, you know, the central image of the book is a gang of rooftop Lost Kids chasing the haunting sound of cello music over the roof of the Palais de Justice. The ending I think does not make the mistake of trying to resolve too much, and overall I found it a really charming experience.

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