Reading

Entry tags:

weekly update

Me-and-media update

I haven't done a media update in weeks! Here's what I've been watching and reading.

Reading
( It didn't feel like a lot when I started, but cutting for length anyway. )

Kdramas
( This always felt like a lot. )

Other TV
( There's quite a lot here, too. )

Guardian/Fandom
Wishliiiiiiist! It went so well. Belated hooray for everyone and all the treats! :D

Perusing the Yuletide tagset was an object lesson in "other people's character preferences are not my character preferences, and that's okay." Still, I have a bunch of things to potentially treat if I can get into gear.

Films
Grace: a prayer for peace, a film about Aotearoa / New Zealand artist Robin White. Beautiful and arty, and I had trouble staying awake. (I'm not great at maintaining attention when there's no dialogue.)

Audio stuff
A handful of eps of Tech Won't Save Us, mostly AI-related. Some Guilty Feminist (UK), which is a bit hit-and-miss for me, but at least is tuned in to *gestures at the dumpster fire that is politics in a lot of places*

/o\ /o\ /o\

(They have a new series of live shows called "The Road to Gilead", and are particularly loud about Farage's links to US right-wing anti-abortion group ADF.)

Writing Excuses. Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson.

Writing/making things
I currently have a thing at beta, and I'm gearing myself up to work on my Yuletide assignment fic.

I broke my

fan_flashworks streak during Guardian Wishlist. That's okay; I actually find streaks a bit burdensome when they get too long. I'm not in a pushing-myself headspace. Instead of writing anything for the Amnesty round, I posted some of the art I've been trying out via Youtube instructional videos for kids. (I'm so happy with how the eyes came out on the kitten-dragon.) (Youtube art videos for kids are excellent, btw! I've drawn a fox, a llama, an owl, a lemur, another dragon, a unicorn mer-red-panda, and a few other things, and they always turn out pleasingly, despite my zero skill level. I'm thinking of investing in a set of coloured pencils for grown-ups, but for now I'm enjoying the tin of miniature ones

cyphomandra sent me before my hysterectomy and a few others left over from when I was five. :-)

Life/health/mental state things
Over the last few months, I've noticed more and more long silver hairs in my house. Hmph.

Good things
The Guardian Slo-Mo Rewatch on

sid_guardian. Guardian fandom generally. Yuletide. Podfic and audiobooks and Kdramas and libraries. The forecast for tomorrow is good. Kdramas. We went to an art exhibition opening yesterday evening, and it was great and made me want to make more things. Writers' Hour.

Poll #33799 Time is

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 47

View Respondents

Time is

View Answers

an arrow
7 (14.9%)

a fruit fly
10 (21.3%)

a banana
7 (14.9%)

melting
13 (27.7%)

relentless
23 (48.9%)

elusive
15 (31.9%)

other
6 (12.8%)

ticky-box full of hippity-hoppity frogs
16 (34.0%)

ticky-box full of blue-haired punk red pandas being, on average, purple
25 (53.2%)

ticky-box full of weird clock karma
17 (36.2%)

ticky-box full of colouring in
24 (51.1%)

ticky-box full of hugs
34 (72.3%)

Entry tags:

write every day

Write Every Day: final talley

As always, it was a pleasure to host. Thanks for being such delightful guests!

Here's the final tally for Write Every Day, 16-31 October 2025.

( Tally )

Please let me know if I’ve missed you, and feel free to check in belatedly. :-)

Entry tags:

ai,
politics

Postcards from the AI-pocalypse

I read this last week, and it's been haunting me ever since.

A new kind of bias: AI choosing itself over humans
Adding another wrinkle, researchers publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) recently discovered a startling trend they call “AI–AI bias.” Large language models like GPT-4 and Meta’s Llama 3.1 consistently favored content created by other AIs over human-written material across product ads, academic abstracts, and even movie reviews.

Study coauthor Jan Kulveit warned that such bias could reshape economic opportunities, with humans at risk of being systematically sidelined. “Being human in an economy populated by AI agents would suck,” he said on X, advising people to run their work through AI tools before submitting it if they suspect another AI will be evaluating it.

This creates a troubling picture: not only are AI systems struggling to deliver promised productivity gains, but they may also be reinforcing their own dominance at the expense of human contributions.

From this article in The Economic Times (India), which also covers an MIT study into AI business application ("95 percent of business attempts to integrate generative AI are failing"), the AI bubble, and AI psychosis.

My Favorite Fics

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Entry tags:

guardian

Random Guardian screencap

(Okay, semi-random. I had it as part of the rewatch post, but I just swapped it out for a different one, and now I have to post this one somewhere, because asdkfhaskdfjhasd! /dork)

Zhao Yunlan crouched on a table, reading a case file, while Da Qing looks on with popcorn.

Zhao Yunlan crouched on a table, reading a case file, while Da Qing looks on with popcorn.

Entry tags:

November writing goals

My writing goals for the second half of October were: don't stuff up my arms, finish my flashfic, finish a treat I started for

guardian_wishlist, sign up for Yuletide, and write something for the

fan_flashworks amnesty round. I managed 2/5, but I'm calling it a win. (My game, my rules. :-)

Goals for November!

post at least one media update (in my head, I still call these "weekly updates", lol)
write my Yuletide assignment fic
maybe a treat or two? or flashfics for things in the Yuletide tagset that I like but no one requested ;-p
finish the thing I'm currently working on
write something else
don't stuff up my arms again
if LWS have another 24-hour sprint, go to some of that

Today I went for a walk and saw a huge eel and some cute dogs and lots of trees. I did a little alibi editing on my WIP, posted a Slo-Mo Rewatch post to

sid_guardian, and a 1000-word comment on that. Not sure if I'm going to write some more this evening or read or watch more A Hundred Memories (on which I have about 2 episodes to go).

(Will I keep posting tiny daily life updates? Who knows?!)

Entry tags:

Stress, Running, and Online Conspiracy Nonsense

I woke up at 5:00 today to begin working on advising stuff. There are a handful of tricky student issues that I have to deal with and I was too tired after I finished teaching and meeting with a failing student afterward to work on this at 20:00 last night. I had my tasks planned out but after a stressful outburst from my husband regarding the upcoming state teaching conference our department is hosting and yet another task he realized hadn't gotten done yet, my to-do list got longer. I'm moving through most of my tasks to get done by 18.00 so we can drive up to PA for a Halloween party hosted by a new friend of his from the Ren Faire. This means of course, I will not get to my book today.

I am glad to have moved through some of these big tasks, but when I went for an easy run today my heart rate was pushing into the high numbers. That is either a sign that I am getting sick or that the stress is getting to me. I think the latter. Next week is going to be a shitshow and I just have to make it through Sunday the 9th, which is my husband's birthday. I am not sure what we will do that day. When he is not happy with his weight, he does not want to eat out and he is extremely unhappy with his weight today. I think we'll try to see a movie because that does not involve food and it is fun to go out on his birthday.

The think I am using to distract me between all the tasks is the latest political conspiracy nonsense my instagram algorithm has been feeding me. There is speculation that something is going on between VP Vance and Erika Kirk, the dead Charlie Kirk's widow. Speculation is based upon things Vance has said in interviews about hoping his wife will become Christian/come over to his beliefs as well as public behavior between Kirk and Vance at a recent event. She effusively compared him to her late husband and gave him an overly familiar hug that did involve her having her hands in his hair briefly. It did look EXTREMELY friendly. Right now it's just lots of speculation based on nothing but photo assumptions and soundbites, but I'm curious to see where this (the speculation and their friendship) goes. I am also wondering/worried about Usha Vance. I don't understand her relationship with her husband or her position on the many things her husband's political party stands for. Maybe she's a grifter like Melania and she'll be fine.

Entry tags:

write every day

Write Every Day: Day 31

So, I talked through some of the main problems I ran into while writing the book, and how, instead of going, “Ack, problems, I quit!” I tried to say, “Ah ha, problems, that means things are getting interesting.”
I often think of Houdini in this context. If he came out wearing, say, a light windbreaker, and said he would now endeavor to get out of it - nobody’s fascinated. But if he’s got on a straitjacket and padlock and lets us throw him into the Hudson River - then we’re talking.
When a writer has a problem, the reader feels it, and then, when the writer identifies and addresses that problem - this feels like originality and innovation.

– George Saunders, via Substack

My day 31: I added another 639 words to my WIP, mostly at writers' hour. I think it's nearly done, but I spent the rest of the day reading the next Dorothy Sayers ~~and dozing on the couch, wow, I sound eighty years old~~. Hoping to manage to finish it tomorrow.

Thank you all so much for being here, for this half of October -- it's been such a pleasure to get your check-ins! I'll post the final tally in a couple of days to allow for time zones. :-)

Reminder:

alightbuthappypen is hosting November. See you over at their place!

The tally
( Tally )

Day 29:

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cmk418,

cornerofmadness,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

Day 30:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

When you check in, please say what day(s) you’re checking in for. You can join in or take a break at any time; you’re always welcome back. And please let me know if I’ve missed you.

Entry tags:

write every day

Write Every Day: Day 30

There will always be constraints—time, budget, materials and equipment. If you’re waiting for all of the roadblocks to be cleared before you begin, you might be waiting all your life. So stop waiting. Just do your best to put something into the world that wasn't there yesterday. We can do that. I hope you begin something today, maybe something you’ve been putting off or waiting on the just-right conditions for. Forget just right and try right now instead. You don’t have to know what you’re doing or how it will turn out. Just start.

– Maggie Smith, via Substack

My day 30: I added another 530 words to my WIP (and did a couple more Youtube art tutorials: a dragon and a black cat). Depending on how my arms are in a couple of hours, I might go to UK Writers' Hour and keep working on my WIP. It would be good to get it done.

One more day in October! Reminder that

alightbuthappypen has offered to host for November.

The tally
( Tally )

Day 28:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

china_shop,

cmk418,

cornerofmadness,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora

Day 29:

china_shop,

badly_knitted,

cmk418,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

Entry tags:

halloween

Halloween Costume Contest at the Pub Run

I am stressed to the point that worry about my book and deadlines are keeping me awake at night. Nevertheless, I did not let that get in the way of me enjoying a little Halloween fun. I still managed to find time to assemble a quick and dirty (and cheap) costume for the pub run Halloween contest last night. AND I WON! The prize - a free pair of running shoes.

Sorry to my French friends and anyone who was deeply upset by the Louvre heist, but I could not help myself. In light of other things in the news, it made me laugh. The Mona Lisa was just the touch I needed to make sure people knew what was up. And to make things even better, there just so happened to be a traffic cop last night when the run started who was willing to pose with me for a photo.

Entry tags:

write every day

Write Every Day: Day 29

"…if you have a fear of failure, you’re never going to learn how to cook. Cooking is one failure after another. That’s how you learn. You’ve got to have what the French call ‘Je m’en foutisme’, or ‘I don’t care what happens.’ The sky can fall, and omelettes can go all over the stove… If you’re not going to be ready to fail, you’re not going to learn."

– Julia Child

My day 29: I added 558 words to a WIP. And then the sun was out, so I went for a walk along a shared pedestrian/mountain biking trail through the trees. (Posting this a bit earlier because my sister's coming over for Fringe tonight. :-)

The tally
( Tally )

Day 27:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

china_shop,

cmk418,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

Day 28:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

Entry tags:

write every day

Write Every Day: Day 28

You've got to work on something dangerous. You have to work on something that makes you uncertain. Something that makes you doubt yourself. You shouldn't feel safe. You should feel, "I don't know if I can write this." That's what I mean by dangerous, and I think that's a good thing to do. Sacrifice something safe.
– Stephen Sondheim

My day 28: Still taking it easy-ish. I spent writers' hour and some of the morning writing meta comments, so that's my writing for the day. And then I tried out some Youtube how-to-art videos for kids (results), and now I'm going to rest. Hoping to get some actual fic-writing in tomorrow. 🤞🤞

The tally
( Tally )

Day 26:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

china_shop,

cmk418,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,