IVD 2025 Volunteer Q&A—Volunteers & Recruiting Spotlight

Jan. 24th, 2026 05:18 pm
[syndicated profile] otw_news_feed

Posted by Lute

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ivd-2025-volunteer-qa-volunteers-recruiting-spotlight/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=275888

Last November we asked the community to submit questions to our OTW volunteers in celebration of International Volunteer Day. In this series of posts we will spotlight some of our committees’ responses.

The Volunteers & Recruiting committee (VolCom) is in charge of inducting, retiring, and placing volunteers on hiatus. They handle personnel records and tool access, as well as assisting with the formation of new committees, subcommittees, and workgroups.

We asked VolCom for replies to your questions, and received a lot of feedback! Below you can find a selection of their answers:

Volunteers & Recruiting Committee Specific Questions

Question: Sometimes I want to help the OTW, and consider applying for a volunteer position like tag wrangling, but I don’t have a lot of time to commit. Is there anything I can do sporadically, or without a lot of time per week?
Committee answer:
All of our roles come with a weekly time expectation—when we recruit for a role, we post a position description, it’s listed there. For some roles, the time requirement starts at two hours per week, while for others it may be five hours or more. How this time is split up in a week depends a lot on the role.
If you find yourself not having enough time to volunteer, but still want to support the OTW, please take a look at our How You Can Help page.

Question: Since this is a non-profit organization, if I wanted to become a volunteer (for fun and because I care about the work being done here), would I be able to use my time as legitimate service hours? (for highschool for example)
Committee answer:
The OTW is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in the United States, but whether we are a good fit for legitimate service hours depends on the specific requirements your school/work/etc may have. Our volunteers usually do not volunteer under the name they use at school or at work, but if you are comfortable letting either your Chairs or the Volunteers & Recruiting committee know that name, you can receive a written proof of volunteering. If there are other requirements, e.g. a proof of volunteered hours, we can’t guarantee that this will be possible for all roles. If you are considering this option, please reach out to the relevant committee via the contact form to discuss what’s possible.

Question: Is there a limit to how many times someone can apply to volunteer and be rejected? How many times should you try before giving up? I’ve applied at least five or six times to different groups and I’m wondering if I should stop bothering you!
Committee answer:
We do not have a limit for applications to the OTW in general. However, if you’ve been repeatedly not accepted for a role, chances are that you are not fulfilling the requirements for that role. Additionally, some committees might have their own restrictions (see the recruitment post and/or position description). Please also consider your application quality and whether there are other reasons that might lead to you not being offered a role. You can email us and ask why an application was rejected – it depends on the committee how much feedback they are willing to give, as the goal is not to write the “perfect application”. Our roles differ a lot in the skills required, so keep an eye out for other roles that might be better suited for your skill set!

Question: What types of things can be done by volunteers? I say this as someone who’d love to volunteer at some point in the future, but have no idea if I have any skill that would actually be helpful.
Committee answer:
The skill sets required from our volunteers depend a lot on the role: There are roles that require some kind of formal education or in-depth knowledge of a specific topic, such as being a lawyer or a financial analyst. Other roles, however, are teaching all required skills during the training period, for those roles it mostly depends on being the “type” for the role. For us in VolCom, it’s more of the latter than the former. For example, our volunteers need to enjoy documentation work and ticking off tasks of to-do lists while being able to do work autonomously. There are many roles in the OTW that look for a specific type of person more than a person with a specific set of skills, or the skills are very transferable: Skills such as project management, navigating tricky interpersonal situations, dividing big-picture goals into actionable items, etc. If you keep an eye on our socials and the news posts, you will see us recruiting regularly. Each role comes with a position description that explains both what the volunteers in this role do, and what is required of applicants, so just watch out for a role that matches your skills and interests!

General Questions

How many hours a week do you spend on your OTW volunteer work?

  • This tends to vary by week as well as by role! As a tag wrangler I used to spend about 3 hours a week on my fandoms, and though it has required some “pruning” of what fandoms I’m working on, most of mine were currently consistent enough that this is a pretty stable amount of time for me.
    For Volunteers & Recruiting, where I serve as both volunteer and co-chair, the time is a lot more fluid. For volunteer-specific tasks I can go between 5-10 hours a week, and for chair work that’s an addition of another 3-5 hours per week. The work done isn’t always in solid chunks of time — I do try to count in the time I have even when I’m just catching up on messages from various other volunteers/committees, but in general that’s where I’ve fallen. (Eevee)
  • I’m a VolCom volunteer and it depends, but I’m mainly spending around 4 to 5 hours minimum working for my committee. It can go from processing inductions or removals or following up on a specific request we’ve received from an OTW member, which in this case is usually pretty easy, to bigger tasks like running recruitments or reviewing documents. In that last case, I like to take 2 solid hours during every work session to really dive into it. (Kalincka)

How do you manage your volunteer time, and do you do the same thing every day like with a day job?

  • I usually block some time on my weekly calendar to get to it! Usually, I do OTW work in the evening, after I’ve come back from my day job. I work an 8-4, and I live fairly close to my workplace, which means that commuting doesn’t eat up too much of my schedule. There are days when I don’t do OTW work, but I always check my emails and Slack multiple times a day to make sure I’m not skipping something urgent. Tasks can vary so even if they’re mainly cases, they vary, so I don’t find it too repetitive! (Kalincka)
  • I spend at least fifteen minutes every day on volunteering – keeping up with what’s happening, seeing if there is anything urgent that needs to be dealt with. Usually, that means I look at my emails and our internal chat platform at least three to four times a day. This is mostly the same every day.
    I work on cases and on documentation frequently – sometimes that happens spontaneously, sometimes I block time in my personal calendar so I don’t end up making other plans. This is not as regular and scheduled as me keeping track of what’s going on in the organization and my committee, but it usually happens for a few hours every two to three days.
    I also have the benefit of having a very flexible daytime job and working a lot from home, which means a lot of my work days consist of me doing an hour of my paid job, an hour of OTW work, three hours of paid job, and so on.There are a lot of recurring tasks or categories of tasks, but it’s still so many different categories of tasks that it’s not getting boring. (corr)

What’s your favorite part about volunteering at the OTW?

  • I love meeting other volunteers and learning how the OTW works. I find it super fascinating to learn how such a large organization runs and at the same time meet the people behind the scenes of it all. (Bekyro)
  • Getting to work together with so many people from all over the world who care for so many different fandoms. I have gotten to talk to people from so many countries that I would have never met otherwise. I also think that AO3 (and the whole OTW) defies a world in which value and worth are measured in financial units – we don’t get paid, the writers on AO3 and Fanlore don’t get paid, the readers don’t get paid. Being a part of this awesome project makes me proud and happy. (corr)

What’s the aspect of volunteer work with the OTW that you most wish more people knew about?

  • We don’t have shareholders or people with financial interests that tell us what to do. We’re all regular fandom people who love fandom and want to maintain a place that’s a home (an archive) to all transformative works. Sometimes, when I browse through discussions about the OTW, I get the feeling that people don’t know that we are not a for-profit company, that we are not making any money, that every wrangled tag, every written news post, every design decision for AO3, every Fanlore policy, all of these things are made by fandom people in their free time. We’re doing this not because we want to earn money with AO3 or the other projects, but because we love fandom and are dedicated to the OTW’s mission. (corr)
  • There is a lot more to the OTW than AO3! I encourage people to check out Open Doors and the other projects the OTW is holding up, it’s worth a look. I know I’ve learned so much thanks to Fanlore, and I didn’t even know that it was OTW volunteers that upheld this platform. (Kalincka)

What does a typical day as an OTW volunteer looks like for you?

  • There’s one thing that never changes, and it’s checking emails/cases/messages. It’s the foundation of my typical day. The tasks in themselves always vary. As a VolCom volunteer I’m pretty sure I do at least one removal per week. (Kalincka)
  • I check my emails and our chat platform multiple times a day to monitor if something urgent comes up – as I get sent an email for every change in our cases, I also keep track of those like that. That’s what I do every day. On days that I do active work, I focus either on documentation, training, or handling cases, and spend one to five hours doing that. (corr)

What is your favorite animal? Alternatively, do you have a favorite breed of cat/dog?

  • My favorite animal are sheep! Unfortunately, I don’t own any sheep. My favorite breed of cat is trash can kitty, all of the cats I have are the ones nobody at the shelter wanted, and they are the best cats I’ve ever met (I might be biased). (corr)
  • I would have to say birds, especially parrots. I love Sun conures, but cockatiels are definitely high up there too (if they weren’t, my own would probably peck me) (yes, I am very biased). If we include fantasy creatures, dragons are also at the top (Bekyro)

Do you enjoy reading fanfic? If so, what’s your favorite work on AO3?

  • I love reading fanfic! It’s the reason I stumbled upon the OTW in the first place. I wouldn’t say I’ve got a single favorite fic in the entire world, but I keep a list. Off the top of my head, and since we’re in an end-of-the-year period, I would heavily recommend reading this Klaus fic (formerly titled ‘In the name of love’). It warms my heart every time (Kalincka)
  • I do! While I do not have any favorite fic, as I read depending on my mood, I do have a bunch I keep returning to. I’m scared to check how big my collection of fics I reread has gotten nowadays. (Bekyro)

Do you write any fanfic yourself? What do you enjoy about it?

  • I do, even if it’s less than I’d like due to lack of time. I have about 350k words published on AO3 and half a million in drafts, which is what I wrote in the last four years.
    I like to get my readers to yell at me. My writer discord is really good at getting upset with me, if I’m not being insulted for hurting their feelings, I didn’t do my job right. I am mostly a character-driven writer, and I like to put my characters into situations or make them face negative consequences. I also love to write healing, but I am decidedly not a fluff writer – the things I write as comfort for myself tend to get comments of people saying that I still hurt them. (corr)
  • I do, though ironically not as much since I started volunteering for the OTW. I love expanding on the worlds given to us, doing missing scenes, fixing tragedies from canon, or imagining canon-compliant AUs (I promise, these are possible!). (Eevee)
  • I do not, to the despair of my fic writing friends. Although I may give it a try sometime if the mood strikes. (Bekyro)

What fandoms are you (currently) in?

  • I’ve not been super active in fandom spaces lately, but the last time I was active was in Haikyuu!! and SK8. Recently I’ve fallen into a danmei rabbit hole starting with 2ha but I haven’t read/written much in it. I also read a lot of bl manhwa/manga! (Eevee)
  • A few years ago, I read this questionable book series called All For The Game by Nora Sakavic, and I have accepted my fate of living in this fandom. I love-hate the books, I love-hate the fandom, and I have found amazing friends in the fandom. Apart from that, I read a lot fandom-blind, as I am looking for specific kinds of stories or tropes. (corr)

Do you feel glad or proud to see fanfiction in your mother tongue?

  • I love that they exist! I think AO3 was one of the first sites where I saw the language I grew up speaking as an option and something about that felt so validating? I don’t read in my native language, but I come across them when translations are requested for tags in my native language and I’m always so excited when they show up. (Eevee)
  • While I don’t read any of them myself, I do find it nice knowing they exist. Especially as my native tongue is a smaller one, and it normally tends to drown among the countless bigger languages that exists (Bekyro)

Thanks so much to every volunteer who took the time to answer!

(For more answers, check out this work on AO3, where we collect additional replies to each question!)

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ivd-2025-volunteer-qa-volunteers-recruiting-spotlight/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=275888

(no subject)

Jan. 24th, 2026 05:44 pm
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep posting in [community profile] endings
this is what will be left behind: a forgotten light bulb burning itself out in the cupboard under the stairs; the odd coin or hairgrip wedged between floorboards; and sand.

Are you ready for almost 3000 words discussing Pretender nonsense?

NSFW Jan. 24th, 2026 12:43 pm

January Meme: The new 1930s?

Jan. 24th, 2026 06:26 pm
selenak: (Charlotte Ritter)
[personal profile] selenak
[personal profile] maia asked: Compare and contrast the US right now and Germany in the 1930s.

Welll, that's the 1 billion question, isn't it. (Literary so, given that the Orange Felon wants to have this sum of money from any fellow autocrat so they can join his "board of peace".

Now: being German, I instinctively shy away from invoking Godwin's law, so I'll start at the outset by declaring that no, I don't think the Orange One is Hitler 2.0, or that ICE are the Gestapo. (The SA during the late Weimar Republic might be a better comparison, as in, paramlitary units lustily doing their best to create and exude violence in the cities so that the dear leader can declare only he can restore order.) Also, I wish we'd have had as many demonstrations against our newly authoritarian government in, say, 1933-1935 as there are in the US right now, instead of, well, none. Individual acts of resistance, sure. Also the SPD being the sole party speaking out against the Ermächtigungsgesetz after the Reichstag burning. (Don't remind me that our current bunch of Neonazis wants to inhabit the very room named after the brave SPD guy who spoke against Hitler on that occasion in 1933.) But no equivalent to the "No Kings" demonstrations, or the current ones in the bitter cold of Minnesota, not until it's the 1940s and the women married to some of the last free Jews in Berlin actually demonstrate in front of Gestapo headquarters when their men get rounded up. I respect and admire the hell out of these women, but given the reaction by Goebbels & Co., who really didn't know how to handle this, I can't help but which these kind of demonstrations had happened in 1933 already, when the ostracisation and taking away of civil rights of everyone's neiighbours started.

Anyway: where I do see parallels is the way rich industrialists paved the way and/or quickly fell in line and profit from the autoritarian government that came to power legally and then promptly started to destroy the republic it was supposed to govern from the inside, and the way huge swaths of the media of the day even before complete state control lis established cleave to the new Overlords. And on the other side of the political spectrum, I see a parallel in the tendency of the left and/or liberal parties to attack each other instead of allying against the authoritarians. (This would be the early 1930s pre 1933.) Now this is hardly unique to the 1930s; a friend of mine who is in his late 80s and actually is a member of the SPD, our traditional centre-left party, said you can always rely on the left to attack each other with more vehemence than anyone else to the profit of their opponents.) Seriously, in the late Weimar Republic the Communists might have had their streetfights with the Nazis, but they kept declaring the SPD was the true enemy, and never mind the communists, your avarage progressive journalist was far more likely to attack and complain moderate or left leaning politicians than the Nazis. (Famously, journalistic icon Karl Kraus declared this was because "nothing about the Nazis inspires my imagination" ("Zu den Nazis fällt mir nichts ein"). Thanks, Kraus.) I'm not saying Democrats should be above criticism, absolutely not, but honestly, I have no time at all for the type of purist who declared they couldn't vote for Kamala Harris (or Hilary Clinton before her) because "Republicans and Democrats are the same anyway" or other arguments along that line. They knew what was at stake, just as anyone paying attention back in the Weimar Republic day did.


Of course, the Orange Menace has been far more open about his grifter status and his unending greed than the Nazis back in the day, but that's because of the difference in eras and societies; financial shakedowns and mafia tactics are getting admiration from huge parts of US society, it seems, whereas the Nazs while being no less interested in robbery by state (some were a bit more blatant about it like Goering, but it really was practised on every level, starting, of course, with forcing German Jews to "sell" their property for ricidiculous little sums) felt the need to dress it up far more, not least because part of Hitler's image included priding himself on "asceticism" and "living for the people". But they - and pretty much every populist/authoritarian system not just in the 1930s - use the same basic structure in their rethoric which unfortunately keeps working through the decades (centuries?).

1) You, the audience, are the best, you're perfect, anyone who wants you to change or adjust is an evil tyrant.

2.) But evidently your life isn't perfect. This is the fault of THEM. (Never, ever, is it the slightest bit your responsibility.) THEY are a mixture of external bogeymen and within-the-society scapegoat. THEY have absolutely no redeeming features and so you don't have to consider talking or negotiating or what not - THEY just deserve to be squashed. Punishing THEM will also magically solve whatever problems your society currently has.

3.) Of course, the squashing and punishing of THEM cannot be done with those lame old laws already existing. On the contrary, these have to be gotten rid off. Any attempt to restrain the punishment and squashing of THEM is clearly treason anyway.

4.) The glorious movement you, you wonderful person, are now a part of is led by the best leader ever. If he doesn't deliver all you want from him immediately, well, he's punishing both the weak traitors and the evil brutes for you, and isn't that the best part anyway?


Meanwhile, any half way responsible take on political situation basically has to start with "it's complicated", analyze and use "maybe it's this way, but maybe there are also other factors" type of qualifications, and any policy of a democratic government is by nature of the government a compromise. Meaning you always leave some disappointment in your electorate. And in an age with an ever shorter attention span, where the majority of people are not bothering with reading or listening to longer explanations anymore and just want short and punchy reassurances, this is possibly more dangerous a fertile ground for the transition of a Republic to a totalitarian state than Germany of the early 1930s was.

Not least because Germany, not as the Kaiserreich nor as the Weimar Republic nor even as the Third Reich, was ever the most powerful state of the world, with the largest miilitary and economic might. The fact the US won't be this for much longer anymore if things continue the way they are going isn't a comfort, because then it will be China.) It did a lot of damage when ruled by evil people anyway. But it had at no point the type of power the US has right now. This is not a comforting thought, either.

Lastly: in school, we were taught that a problem the Weimar Republic had was that there weren't enough republicans with a small r in it, that the Empire had conditioned its subjects to a strictly hiearchical society, that as opposed to England Germany hadn't had a centuries long transitonary period between absolutism and parliamentary rule, let a centuries of a Republic with the resulting self-understanding the way the uS has. On the one hand, I am a bit more sceptical on tha last part now. I mean, I always knew that The West Wing wasn't reality tv, but I didn't think The Handmaid's Tale was, either. Especially with the Nixon precedence, where the Republicans did turn against their blatantly caught at wrong doing President instead of removing their spine and denying he could have possibly done something wrong, I did believe the whole checks and balance thing I had learned about in school did work. For enlightened self interest reasons if not for moral reasons, because who would want their career to depend on the whim of a despot with more self control than a toddler? But no. On the other hand, see above. I only wish we would have had so much visible protest and opposition to horrible injustices in the 1930s as I see every day happening in the US. The Weimar Republic ceased to be within three months of Hitler becoming Chancellor, basically. By autumn, the transformation into hardcore dictatorship was complete. Whereas the US is still a Republic. If you can keep it.

The other days
  • Current Mood: indescribable
  • Current Location: Munich
Tags:

This is interesting

Jan. 24th, 2026 12:19 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
I got an email from Riotminds providing me with a free preview of their upcoming Wicked Dew - Victorian Horror RPG. What caught my eye is that it seems to be entirely online. I've asked if there's a downloadable rulebook I overlooked, but I can see why a company might adopt a purely online approach.

[Update]

There will be a printed book.

It's an urban jungle out there....

Jan. 24th, 2026 03:23 pm
oursin: Fotherington-Tomas from the Molesworth books saying Hello clouds hello aky (Hello clouds hello sky)
[personal profile] oursin

But so not in the way people who diss on my lovely city of residence usually mean it.

From scorpions to peacocks: the species thriving in London’s hidden microclimates: An extraordinary mosaic of wildlife has made Britain’s urban jungle its home:

London is the only place in the UK where you can find scorpions, snakes, turtles, seals, peacocks, falcons all in one city – and not London zoo. Step outside and you will encounter a patchwork of writhing, buzzing, bubbling urban microclimates.
Sam Davenport, the director of nature recovery at the London Wildlife Trust, emphasises the sheer variation in habitats that you find in UK cities, which creates an amazing “mosaic” of wildlife.
“If you think of going out into the countryside where you have arable fields, it’s really homogeneous. But if you walk a mile in each direction of a city you’re going to get allotments, gardens, railway lines, bits of ancient woodland.”

Among the established populations:
More than 10,000 yellow-tailed scorpions (Tetratrichobothrius flavicaudis) are thought to live in the crevices of walls at Sheerness dockyard, Kent, and are believed to have spawned a second colony in the east London docklands. They arrived in the UK in the 1800s, nestled in shipments of Italian masonry.
Meanwhile, Regent’s Park provides perfect woodland conditions for the UK’s main population of Aesculapian snakes (Zamenis longissimus). One of Europe’s largest snake species, these olive-coloured constrictors are thought to be escapers from a former research facility, surviving in the wild by preying on rodents and birds.

(We are not impressed by the security arrangements of the 'former research facility', though maybe will give them a pass if, just possibly, this was a Blitz event.)

Art-loving falcons: 'Swooping from the Barbican, the falcons often spend the day at Tate Modern, just across the river'. Doesn't that conjure up an image?

Bats! - 'Wildlife experts believe they navigate much like human commuters, using linear railway embankments as guides through the city.' Bless.

And FERAL PEACOCKS!!! 'Other birds are legacies of Britain’s aristocratic past. Peacocks, for example, are known to strut through the Kyoto Garden in Holland Park, feral descendants of birds once kept by the gentry'.

Mention of the pelicans in St James's Park as descendants of gifts to Charles II, but alas, no crocodiles from that era have survived.

Given this metropolitan seethingness of nature red in tooth and claw, do men really need to go on Rewilding Retreats in Cornwall? (there was a para about this in the travel section which I can't locate online) - particularly given the 'walks in ancient temperate rain forest', I felt this was folk horror movie waiting to happen - just me??

Tags:

Winter storm "Fern"; two Purrcies; This week in books

Jan. 24th, 2026 10:35 am
mecurtin: gray arts & crafts leaves (winter)
[personal profile] mecurtin
It's weird for Philly & north to be expecting a foot or more of snow and for that to be the *minor* part of a winter storm. We're all battened down, here: lots of food in the freezer, extra milk for hot chocolate, we have a generator. But since not much ice is expected, "only" a foot of snow and bitter cold weather, we count as relatively OK -- this isn't anything people aren't prepared for, after all. My car is a Subaru, and this is why.

I'm thinking a lot about those of you in regions where the infrastructure & housing construction are less prepared. Send up a signal flag at [community profile] fandom_checkin if you can.

You must PET! I command it! says Purrcy and so of course I must obey. A stern taskmaster, but adorable.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby sits up on his little platform giving the camera a stern look. His ears, which are standing straight up, look exceptionally large.

#Purrcy was playing excitedly in his box, so I stretched my phone over to see what he was playing with -- and it's a Forbidden Hair Tie, he *knows* he's not supposed to have those! I swapped it for a feather toy, less likely to get swallowed to disastrous effect.
#cats #CatsOfBluesky #Caturday

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby's head is on the side in his box, wild-eyed and snarling, teeth visible as he fiercely chews a black elastic hair tie. He is a mighty hunter! Do not touch his prey!


I meant to post My Week in Books on Wednesday, but writing about Lord Shang got involved, also my back hurt. So this is the list as of Wednesday.

#9 Tales from Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
I didn't read this when it first came out in May 2001 -- I was waiting to get around it and then 9/11 happened and my concentration was shot for a year or more. This is where she really does the work of looking at the patriarchal and Western preconceptions she'd lazily incorporated into Earthsea's worldbuilding way back when (when she was young and I was a child) and asking How (in a Watsonian fashion) they got in there, before she dismantles them in The Other Wind.

#10 The Other Wind, Ursula K. Le Guin
So this is the one where Le Guin finally dismantles all the parts of her original Earthsea worldbuilding that didn't grow as she grew, that were put in lazily or because they were tropes or "archetypes" and not because they spoke the Truth of her heart.

One of these things was, why are there no female students on Roke? Another was, how does this relate to the Old Places and the Old Magic? Both of these questions Le Guin started to work with in Tehanu. But the central question is, why does the Land of the Dead look like the ashy afterlife of the mediocre dead in certain Western mythologies, where is Death that is the necessary other side of Life?

And it's pulling on that thread that unravels everything, patriarchy, Old Magic, Kargad lands, dragons, and all. To reform it into a more perfect union? Perhaps. At least one that has a chance to grow better.

And yes, I cried at the end. "Not all tears are evil."

#11 The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett. Re-read for the first time in decades. It was one of my re-re-re-reads during my childhood/teens, but I didn't read it aloud to my kids when they were young because I didn't want to attempt the Yorkshire accents, so the gap was longer than for many of my childhood faves.

I hadn't remembered how much it's a story of two rich children whose parents never wanted them. But of course when I read it then I wasn't a parent, that part didn't register. Another thing I notice now is that it's a sign that Mary and Colin are ill, neglected, and ugly that they are *too thin*, and of returning health and good looks that they become *fatter*. This was normal! This is the human baseline: too thin means undernourished and ill, plump means healthy. When Mary first comes from India her hair is lank, flat, and thin; when she becomes fatter and healthier her hair comes in thicker and glossier.

What did register, what really soaked into my brain, were the descriptions of spring coming. I wonder how much my feeling that spring is the best season is due to this book?

And now that I've been a gardener for years the gardening passages mean even more than they did to me as a child.

#12 Kim, Rudyard Kipling.
Tried reading it as a teen but could never make it out of the first chapter, this was my 1st time through. Not what I expected--I thought there'd be more of a *plot*. And I didn't expect so much of it would be about religious seeking. I knew, from "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat" in The Second Jungle Book that Kipling respected the sadhu tradition, but no-one had mentioned that Kim's most important relationship is with a lama, that spying-for-the-Empire is really his side gig. And WOW, Kipling really has zero respect for the C of E, the Catholic priest comes off a *lot* better.

I picked this up to read because, having just read The Secret Garden, I was thinking about the orphans of Empire who feature so heavily in British kidlit of the late 19th C & between the wars. Wandering through Wikipedia, I found that Kipling *was not a native speaker of English*. I hadn't realized how deeply the imperialist project had twisted him personally. Because it's clear that he loves India as his native land, even though he doesn't love the people as his people--but the English aren't truly his people, either.

People who've imagined what happened to Kim O'Hara in the future are IMHO wrong if they think he'll still be a British agent after 1922 at the latest. By the end of the novel he's still a political ignoramus, but sooner or later he's going to talk to some adult Irishmen about the connection between the most recent (1899-90) famine in India & the Potato Famine. Maybe he'll slip away to Ireland, maybe to America, maybe he'll use his skills for Indian freedom--but once he figures out he's not actually *English*, just another one of their playing-pieces, he's not going to stay loyal. It's just a Game to them, after all.

#13 The Book of Lord Shang: Apologetics of State Power in Early China. By Shang Yang, edited & translated by Yuri Pines
I picked this up because I've read some of Yuri Pines' academic articles. Lord Shang is one of the most reviled writers in traditional Chinese thought, usually for the uniform, harsh punishments he recommends for *everything*. What Pines makes clear -- and what you can see in the text -- is that Lord Shang was opposed to a lot of what were considered virtues -- filial piety, family loyalty, even human feeling (ren, 仁) -- because they were used to indulge sloppiness and corruption. He classified the teachers of such virtues -- that is, Confucian scholars -- among the worthless, wandering class, who have to be eliminated or discouraged if the state is to achieved its goal: the establishment of a unified Empire of All-Under-Heaven.

Obviously Confucian scholars, who Lord Shang hated, would more than return the favor of hating him back! But to my reading they also hated him for two additional reasons.

Lord Shang's formula for controlling the people and molding them into an unstoppable military force involved both a carrot and a stick. The stick was a very heavy punishment-based legal code, which everybody talks about in horror. More important to my mind was the system of carrots: cutting off all other methods of social advancement besides through the military, but leaving military success as a *guaranteed* route to social rising, open to foot soldiers on up. *Any* peasant who went to war and was credited with an enemy head got more land. With more success (= heads), more land, more authority, more money -- the prospect of true social advancement was there, for anyone who was willing to fight.

And this leads to the other reason later scholars hated Lord Shang: it worked. This formula to create a motivated rank-and-file military is one reason Qin overcame the other Warring States, to become the first dynasty and set much of the template for future Chinese history.

There's only been study so far comparing Lord Shang to Machiavelli and I haven't been able to read it, but there's a lot to do there. Both men were realists, advising rulers about what *really* works, talking about human behavior as much as possible stripped of their respective cultures' platitudes. Lord Shang's advice is more extreme because the situation he faced was more extreme: states with millions of people, fielding armies of tens or hundreds of thousands, warring against others for the prize of Emperor of All Under Heaven. The stakes for Machiavelli's Prince were minute by comparison, and the level of control he might exert was also limited. And he didn't propose anything as radical as offering a route for social advancement to peasants.

#14 A Most Efficient Murder, by Anthony Slayton

#15 A Rather Dastardly Death, by Anthony Slayton

First two in the "Mr. Quayle Mysteries". The first one is better, as it has a strong flavor of Wodehouse mixed in with Agatha Christie. But both owe too much to Christie IMHO in that they're *fundamentally* snobbish. Also, as pastiches written by an American, they suffer from a. Americanisms/anachronisms, b. not realizing how the passage of time works. Mr. Quayle is frequently described as a "young man", but he was in The War and this is 1928, he is no longer young.

So they passed the time, but that's about it.
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wips

Jan. 24th, 2026 07:41 am
runpunkrun: ronon dex standing hipshot, blaster in hand (avant garde)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
So I posted my Star Trek fic: Maybe He's Born With It (Maybe It's GlaxosEpsilonYor)!!

Going by file dates I started that one in 2020, so compared to all my other wips, it was relatively new. It took a lot of writing to finish because when I started it was really just a couple of paragraphs and then five handwritten pages. I quickly had a first draft, but it needed a lot of editing to connect the themes and refine Jim's voice. It's at the very start of his career as a captain and he's still a hot bro-y mess, and even though I found myself resisting his self-centeredness, I needed his actions to reflect that selfishness, and I think I hit a good balance of bro and personal growth. He can be taught! Spock, of course, is perfect. No notes.

Next up in my endless list of neglected WIPs: It should be my Pinto fic—which, as I recall, is all but done except for the last lines, fuck you, last lines—but instead, it's the G-rated Stargate Atlantis [community profile] kink_bingo non-sexual knifeplay fic about an extinct Satedan fruit. I gotta be me.

Looks like I last opened this in 2011 and it's basically complete. Let's gooooo.
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Medford snow emergency and parking

Jan. 24th, 2026 10:37 am
gingicat: (oops - Agatha Heterodyne)
[personal profile] gingicat posting in [community profile] davis_square
Summary:
- begins at 10AM Sunday (tomorrow)
- parking on ODD-numbered side only
- no parking on main arteries including Harvard Avenue, College Avenue, and Boston Avenue.

Details:( Read more... )

Caribbean Matters: Celebrating Afro-Puerto Rican icon Arturo Schomburg

Jan. 24th, 2026 02:00 pm
[syndicated profile] dailykos_feed

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2026/1/24/2363605/-Caribbean-Matters-Celebrating-Afro-Puerto-Rican-icon-Arturo-Schomburg?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. Hope you’ll join us here every Saturday. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.

For those of us who have an interest in or study Black history, Arturo Schomburg is a familiar name. The name also graces a library of renown in New York City, known as The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

“The Schomburg Center is one of the largest and oldest archives that is publicly available to anyone of Black history throughout the diaspora,” Leah Drayton, senior PR manager at the center, said.

The Schomburg Center is located on 135th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard. It’s named after Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.

“Arturo Schomburg was a Puerto Rican-born Black bibliophile. He came to America when he was just 17 years old. When he was a young man, he was told Black people had no notable history to speak of, and he kind of spent his life proving that wrong and building vindicating evidence of Black achievement and Black life,” Drayton said.

The Schomburg began as The Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints as a special collection of the New York Public Library’s 135th Street branch. This was important as the Black population grew in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance.

“Arturo Schomburg brought his incredibly rich collection to the library. He brought over 10,000 items, which would grow to the 11 million that we have today,” Drayton said.

I celebrated Schomburg here at Daily Kos in 2018 for Black History Month, and I think it’s about time for a reintroduction—and what better day than on his birthday? He was born Jan.  24, 1874, in Puerto Rico, and joined the ancestors on June 19, 1938.

The relentless attacks on and attempts by Donald Trump and his MAGA minions to erase Black history were powerfully addressed by historian Ibram X. Kendi in a 2025 New York Times op ed. Kendi wrote:

Life is named story. Afterlife is named history. Racist Americans have murdered Black lives and tried to murder Black afterlives, Black stories and Black history, Black storytellers and Black historians. So when Black people die, what we created, what we contributed, what we changed, what we documented dies, too. No funeral. Just gone from memory.

Schomburg’s life was dedicated to ensuring Black history would not only be memorialized, but also celebrated.

The New York Public Library published “Arturo A. Schomburg: His Life and Legacy”:

One of the most influential forces behind the creation of The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is the man the research center is named after, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. Born in Puerto Rico in 1874 to a Black mother and a father of German descent, young Arturo often wondered about the lack of African history taught in his classrooms.This interest formed the cornerstone of Schomburg’s eventual lifework consisting of research and preservation—work that would lead him to become one of the world’s premier collectors of Black literature, slave narratives, artwork, and diasporic materials.

During the 1920s and '30s, Schomburg traveled to Europe, Latin America, and across the United States collecting new materials that bolstered his already voluminous collection. In 1926 the Carnegie Corporation funded The New York Public Library’s purchase of Schomburg’s private collection for $10,000. This would mark the beginning of the 135th Street branch’s transformation into the Schomburg Center.

Schomburg’s curation work was so heralded that in 1929, Fisk University President Charles S. Johnson invited him to curate Fisk’s library. By assisting in the architectural design of the library and focusing on providing equitable experiences for researchers, including the building of a reading room and browsing space, Schomburg helped cement Fisk’s standing as one of the leading institutions on Black research and studies. By the time Schomburg ended his tenure at Fisk, the library’s collection had expanded to 4,600 books from a mere 106 items.

I found a few short documentaries on Schomburg on YouTube that are worth watching. Here;’s one from the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute:

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YouTube Video

Episode two of Nothing About Us Without Us is here! We’re highlighting Afro-Puerto Rican historian, Harlem Renaissance leader, and community builder Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. We’re exploring his contributions to both the Spanish and English-speaking African Diaspora, particularly in New York City during the early 1900s.

From The Root:

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YouTube Video

Did you know one of the most influential curators of black history was Afro-Puerto Rican? His name is Arturo Schomburg and his work helped create the blueprint of modern black studies.

From The Schomburg Center:

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YouTube Video

Learn about ways to bring the Schomburg Center’s namesake Arturo A. Schomburg into your classroom lessons.

PBS also covered the bibliophile in “Arturo Schomburg | American Historia: The Untold Story of Latinos”:

Learn about Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, an Afro-Latino activist from Puerto Rico, who began a collection of materials to uplift the African diaspora and helped lay the foundation for the Harlem Renaissance. In this clip from American Historia, explore how Schomburg embraced his identity and causes that he was passionate about, including Puerto Rican and Cuban independence, as well as sharing the rich cultural and intellectual achievements of African Americans from across the globe.

More About This Resource

Prompted by his quest to shed light on Latino heroes, actor and film producer John Leguizamo takes viewers on a journey through history to showcase the often-overlooked contributions of Latino people. In this three-hour docuseries for PBS, Leguizamo is on a mission to share forgotten and rarely told Latino contributions to American history. Because, as he puts it:“If our contributions were written back into history textbooks, can you imagine how America would see us? More importantly, can you imagine how we would see ourselves?” 

Schomburg’s name made the news recently when New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was sworn in:

On January 1, 2026, in a historic first, Zohran Kwame Mamdani was sworn in as New York City’s first Muslim mayor, using a Qur’an from the collections of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

[...]

This Qur’an, however, stands apart for its history and restrained simplicity. Copied in Ottoman Syria in the late 18th or early 19th century, it is written primarily in black ink, with red ink used to highlight the structural divisions of the text. The absence of opulent illumination suggests it belonged to an ordinary reader.

This Qur’an was part of the personal library of Arturo A. Schomburg (1874–1938), a leading bibliophile of the African Diaspora, who built a world-class collection documenting the history and culture of people of African descent. Schomburg’s personal collection, including this manuscript, became the basis for the Schomburg Center.

x

also did you know New York Public Library provided this historic copy of the Qur’an for Mamdani’s swearing in (via the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

[image or embed]

— garrett’s pink pony holodeck (@garrettkiriakos.bsky.social) January 1, 2026 at 12:53 PM

Please join me in the comments section below for more on Arturo Schomburg, and for the weekly Caribbean News Roundup.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2026/1/24/2363605/-Caribbean-Matters-Celebrating-Afro-Puerto-Rican-icon-Arturo-Schomburg?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

"Intransigence" commentary

Jan. 24th, 2026 10:03 am
chthonic_cassandra: (Dracula and Mina)
[personal profile] chthonic_cassandra
Author's commentary for Intransigence, part 12 of Compromise. Spoilers through the end of the series.

( Read more... )
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question

18 Jan. 24th, 2026 09:00 am

Blue Lock: Allsagi Fest - Sign-ups Open!

NSFW Jan. 24th, 2026 10:22 pm
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Heated Rivalry rec

18 Jan. 24th, 2026 08:25 am
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Cartoon: Technically not lying

Jan. 24th, 2026 01:30 pm

Heated Rivalry analysis

18 Jan. 24th, 2026 07:41 am
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Post-editing round "pacing check"

Jan. 24th, 2026 01:12 pm
vriddy: whatever (whatever hawks)
[personal profile] vriddy

As expected the pacing check didn't really do anything as a pacing check lolsob. The new bits were super fun and the old bits kinda felt draggy. However I have Thoughts regardless! Also I waited to have a 4h block of time to read but tat wasn't enough orz I think it took over a little 5h to reread overall, for 56k words - just noting this down as a reminder for my future self.

I wanted to just "jot down a few notes" but I'm gonna have to use headers again. Whoops. This got long.

Waiting to have a lot of time to do writerly stuff = no

Also: as much as doing a full reread at once appeals, postponing over and over until such a magical block of time manifests isn't reasonable. This is kinda funny to relearn because this used to be a source for writing block for me back in my early writing days (wayyy back). I had to wait until I had a Big Chunk Of Free Time for focus reasons. Things have gotten a lot happier for me since I learnt how to write in 30 minutes (or sometimes 15 minutes!) blocks, and also that doesn't preclude the occasional delightful Big Chunk Of Writerly Time from happening either.

Full reread good for some things, even if not for pacing exactly

Otherwise, the full reread was good to see how the changes hold together. While a rewritten scene toward the end does need a bit more air, the first half where I did the bulk of the work imo flow super well. While I can see the seams where I attached the old to the new, it's mostly because I remember the old version(s). I'm just really really enjoying what the story is turning into. I was a bit worried because when reworking stuff, you can also see what it no longer is and no longer says, but whatever it is now, it sure is something I like :D The chapter that many beta-readers said felt too long, and which is now nearly twice as long, didn't drag at all for me. It's hard to tell if it's because I care too much already about these characters, or because a lot of was rewritten and therefore falsely feels more fresh to my brain, but that's what valiant beta-readers will help me find out soon enough :D

How many drafts is enough drafts?

( writing writing editing blah blah happy :D )

What next?

( Plans! Rough plans! Bad plans! Compels me though )

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Weekly Chat

Jan. 24th, 2026 01:58 pm
dancing_serpent: (07-Ghost - Haruse - draining the darknes)
[personal profile] dancing_serpent posting in [community profile] c_ent
The weekly chat posts are intended for just that, chatting among each other. What are you currently watching? Reading? What actor/idol are you currently following? What are you looking forward to? Are you busy writing, creating art? Or did you have no time at all for anything, and are bemoaning that fact?

Whatever it is, talk to us about it here. Tell us what you liked or didn't like, and if you want to talk about spoilery things, please hide them under either of these codes:
or
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In which there is Prototaxites <3

Jan. 24th, 2026 12:01 pm
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
I might have mentioned my favourite palaeontological mystery a few times so here's a link to a significant new paper on the subject, based on samples from the Rhynie Chert in Scotland:

[Science Advances] 'Prototaxites fossils are structurally and chemically distinct from extinct and extant Fungi.'

And, more relevant to most people reading this post, here's a link to Joe Botting, half of my favourite team nerd* @ Life Through Time, with an explainer vid:

[youtube] 'Life, but not as we know it... the Prototaxites mystery deepens again!'

Enjoy!

P.S. TUUUBES!!1!! ;-)

* Lucy Muir being the other not-appearing-in-this-film half. :-)
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Good deed / public service reminder

Jan. 24th, 2026 09:30 am
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

I just met someone to return their partner's phone, which I found in the road on the way home from ice hockey practice around 1am. Phone, case and debit card all scattered and wet from the rain I was grateful to have missed, the phone itself cracked but still intact. I put them in my bike and went on home.

There I dried everything out and set out to see if I could get in touch with the owner. I couldn't get into the phone, couldn't make calls or send messages, could access emergency contact info but it hadn't been populated, could view Gmail notifications which gave me the owners email address. I emailed it (and had the satisfying confirmation of seeing the resulting notification a short while later). I could see someone had been repeatedly calling the phone, and when they did so again I answered and we were in business. The owner was in a car accident, spent the night in A&E, and just got out, poor thing. I've just come back from meeting the partner at the Co-op to hand it over.

The situation reminded me to check my own phone was set up with emergency contacts and medical info in the Emergency section, which can be accessed without unlocking the phone. I also have my email address showing on my lock screen (all my notifications have the content hidden unless the phone is unlocked). Let this be your reminder to consider what you want visible on your own phone if it is lost.

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