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Today was another building resident's move-out day - the same person who gave me most of her non-perishables a little while ago. Today was everything she had left in her fridge and freezer, and whatever else happened to be around. Some eggs, some frozen strawberries, a lime, frozen cubed ginger, oat milk, tahini, olive oil, soy sauce, mirin, a couple avocados, shallots, sesame oil, agave syrup, some cauliflower, and other ends and odds. I composted the oyster sauce and most of the cheeses immediately, and the rest's going to get used up in due time.
Some of that due time was tonight. For lunch next week, I swept the kitchen and used up the cauliflower, the shallots, some garlic cloves, some garlic scapes, the last onion I had around, some tomatoes, and a bit of a bunch of spices. I cooked the last of a bag of basmati rice, and mixed it all with a can of kidney beans. It wouldn't have worked as well without the two cups of cubed cauliflower. It needed some vegetables in there.
I took some cleaning supplies, some bathroom stuff, and $11.79 in dimes, nickels, and pennies. As a favor, I took a bunch of old pillowcases and duvet covers to the appropriate recycling station. As a favor, I'll be taking a bag of electronics - extension cords and whatnot - to another appropriate recycling station. A tiny wooden turtle and two cutting boards. Some fancy cookbooks I'll see about taking down to the Strand.
Someone else came by when I was there to grab some large pieces of furniture. I helped him move it, and he was impressed I had such an easy time of it. I've often said I go to the gym to help people move furniture. And today, it finally happened.
I didn't go to the movies, spending the afternoon logging some letters and doing the sweep-the-kitchen cooking instead, acting for instead of against my better judgment. It was still a good day.
I also found out James Ortiz is on Cameo, and while I don't know if he'll accept the request - others have turned me down before - it'll still be worth it to ask him if he'll do some poetry reading for me. A friend suggested Jabberwocky. I was thinking The Litany or For What Binds Us. I may go with the Gioia.
Some of that due time was tonight. For lunch next week, I swept the kitchen and used up the cauliflower, the shallots, some garlic cloves, some garlic scapes, the last onion I had around, some tomatoes, and a bit of a bunch of spices. I cooked the last of a bag of basmati rice, and mixed it all with a can of kidney beans. It wouldn't have worked as well without the two cups of cubed cauliflower. It needed some vegetables in there.
I took some cleaning supplies, some bathroom stuff, and $11.79 in dimes, nickels, and pennies. As a favor, I took a bunch of old pillowcases and duvet covers to the appropriate recycling station. As a favor, I'll be taking a bag of electronics - extension cords and whatnot - to another appropriate recycling station. A tiny wooden turtle and two cutting boards. Some fancy cookbooks I'll see about taking down to the Strand.
Someone else came by when I was there to grab some large pieces of furniture. I helped him move it, and he was impressed I had such an easy time of it. I've often said I go to the gym to help people move furniture. And today, it finally happened.
I didn't go to the movies, spending the afternoon logging some letters and doing the sweep-the-kitchen cooking instead, acting for instead of against my better judgment. It was still a good day.
I also found out James Ortiz is on Cameo, and while I don't know if he'll accept the request - others have turned me down before - it'll still be worth it to ask him if he'll do some poetry reading for me. A friend suggested Jabberwocky. I was thinking The Litany or For What Binds Us. I may go with the Gioia.
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itsabattlefield Supernatural battle. Entry count was only 20, but... I'm me, and I have a bunch of extras... What can I say? I love me some werewolves, vampires & witches ;D
[20] Being Human (US & UK)
[03] She-Wolf of London
[02] Sabrina the Teenage Witch
[07] Grimm
[01] Moonlight
[02] Buffy the Vampire Slayer
PREVIEW
werewolves, witches, and vampires....
itsabattlefield Supernatural battle. Entry count was only 20, but... I'm me, and I have a bunch of extras... What can I say? I love me some werewolves, vampires & witches ;D[20] Being Human (US & UK)
[03] She-Wolf of London
[02] Sabrina the Teenage Witch
[07] Grimm
[01] Moonlight
[02] Buffy the Vampire Slayer
PREVIEW
werewolves, witches, and vampires....
09.07.2026 10:29 pm
Flores Hobbits' eating habits offer clues about their evolutionary past
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arstechnica_feed
arstechnica_feedUntil about 60,000 years ago, diminutive hominin cousins, Homo floresiensis (affectionately nicknamed Hobbits for obvious reasons), shared the island of Flores with Komodo dragons, pygmy elephants, and giant rats.
Based on the presence of hominin and pygmy elephant bones in the same layers of cave sediment, it originally looked like the Hobbits had hunted and butchered dwarf elephants—an impressive feat for such a tiny hominin. But according to University of Tübingen anthropologist Elizabeth Veatch and her colleagues, it was the Komodo dragons that were the hunters, while the Hobbits only showed up to scavenge what was left.
If Veatch and her colleagues are right, their findings may challenge some of the assumptions we’ve made about Homo floresiensis—and about which hominin species was the first to venture into the wider world beyond Africa.
09.07.2026 09:56 pm
Michigan's explosive outbreak of diarrheal parasite jumps to over 1,200 cases
Posted by arstechnica_feed
arstechnica_feedCases of an explosive diarrheal parasite continue to skyrocket in Michigan, which is reporting 1,251 cases as of July 9. Of those, 44 were hospitalized. Meanwhile, across the border in Ohio, cases are also quickly rising, with news reports of a case total over 500.
The outbreak in Michigan began with two cases reported on June 22 and rose steeply at the start of July. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) reported 572 cases on July 4. On Wednesday, July 8, 239 cases were reported, the highest single-day tally so far. The current total of 1,251 cases includes 159 case reports received on July 9.
The epicenter of the outbreak is in the southeastern corner of the state, where health officials from multiple jurisdictions are working furiously to identify and interview cases to track the source or sources of the parasite, which spreads through food and water.
09.07.2026 09:25 pm
OpenAI wants its new tool to do your work for you and with you
Posted by arstechnica_feed
arstechnica_feedLast year, when we tested out the "Agent Mode" in OpenAI's Atlas web browser, we complained that any automated tasks tended to stop after a few minutes, limiting its usefulness for ongoing or complex tasks. With today's release of ChatGPT Work, OpenAI says it has solved that problem with a new tool that can "stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work."
The company is challenging users to evaluate ChatGPT Work by "giv[ing] it a task you already know well," such as analyzing a budget or preparing a sales meeting. The company also promises that ChatGPT Work can automate entire workflows, going from customer research to a campaign brief to locally tailored marketing assets, for instance. At the same time, the company stresses that the tool will wait for you to "approve important actions."
ChatGPT Work also integrates Scheduled Tasks, a souped-up version of cron jobs that can "take repetitive tasks off your plate" on a schedule or whenever a monitored event occurs. These tasks can keep going when you're away from your desk and can be monitored from your phone, the company says.
Это ты вылетаешь в четыре часа ночи из Гонконга в Сан Франциско, летишь хз сколько времени, и прилетаешь в два часа ночи того же дня.
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09.07.2026 08:52 pm
Patch for Windows Defender 0-day could allow attackers to fill hard disk
Posted by arstechnica_feed
arstechnica_feedA patch Microsoft released on Wednesday to fix a zero-day vulnerability in its Defender security engine may cause Windows machines to write files large enough to completely consume available disk space, the researcher who discovered the flaw said.
RoguePlanet, tracked as CVE-2026-50656, came to public notice in June when NightmareEclipse, the pseudonymous name used by a researcher, disclosed it along with code for exploiting it. The vulnerability allows remote attackers to gain administrative control of Windows 10 and Windows 11 machines, even when real-time protection has been disabled. Over the past few months, the anonymous researcher has published a handful of other zero-days that have sent Microsoft scrambling to develop patches.
Writing files of unlimited size
Microsoft said Wednesday that it patched RoguePlanet with an update to the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine, which is used by the Defender antivirus app. The fix will automatically be downloaded and installed without users having to take any action. Wednesday’s update also includes “defense-in-depth updates to help improve security-related features.”
09.07.2026 08:28 pm
Allstate accuses Broadcom of auditing it because it quit VMware, CA
Posted by arstechnica_feed
arstechnica_feedAllstate Insurance Company has accused Broadcom of haphazardly issuing audits against it because the insurance firm decided not to renew its contracts with VMware and CA Technologies.
The allegations were made in relation to a lawsuit that VMware filed against Allstate in December 2025, according to The Register. In the complaint, Broadcom alleges that Allstate failed to comply with license audits, which Broadcom claims its contract with Allstate requires.
In a June 12 filing, Allstate suggested that Broadcom issued the audits in response to Allstate deciding to end business with its companies. Allstate's statement reads:
09.07.2026 08:12 pm
Humanoid robots controlled by surgeons did world-first operation on live pigs
Posted by arstechnica_feed
arstechnica_feedHumanoid robots have surgically removed the gallbladders from living animals in an unprecedented medical experiment—but not as autonomous machines capable of replacing human doctors. Instead, skilled human surgeons remotely controlled the robots’ movements in a new example of human-robot teamups.
The teleoperated humanoid robots completed two minimally invasive surgeries by removing gallbladders from live pigs during a preclinical trial that was published in the journal Nature. If this approach eventually proves clinically ready for human patients, surgeons could use such humanoid robots to remotely perform robotic-assisted surgical care in smaller hospitals and clinics that lack the resources to install specialized but expensive surgical robots.
“It's a fraction of the cost and it takes a fraction of the space in an operating room,” said Shanglei Liu, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, in an interview with UC San Diego Today. “So it’s easy to deploy, anywhere from rural areas, to the battlefield, and even to space.”
Over the last few years, we have sorted and decluttered enough that we no longer need the large storage unit that Cattitude and I rented when we had to move into a small apartment on short notice, in 2019.
Adrian did a lot of the work, both mental and physical. We gave away a lot of books, and also things like an air conditioner and an exercise bike.
We now have a much smaller and less expensive storage unit, which we hope to have cleared in a couple of months (the units are rented by the month).
After Cattitude and Adrian got home last night, having moved things down the corridor and officially given up the old unit, we had the traditional post-moving pizza for dinner.
It hasn’t been that long since the last media roundup and I haven't read that much but I had lots of thoughts that I wanted to share, so have a post:
Hirayasumi, vol 3+4 by Keigo Shinzō— This continues to be very charming. I’m loving all the little details.The cityscapes here feel so warm and lived in! I'm not sure if it's a slice of life manga thing, a manga thing or just an artifact of my limited selection but I've been really enjoying the land/cityscapes in the slice of life manga I've been reading recently
Content note: fatphobia/diet culture
Silver Spoon, vol 14-15 by Hiromu Arakawa— I’m working on a rec list of slice of life manga and I was reminded that I’ve never read the last two volumes of this series. I'd always meant to reread the rest of the series but that felt like too much of a project. So I ended up just reading these last two volumes – it wasn’t that hard to pick up, there’s helpful story summary in the front of each volume.
This is a charming story about a city kid who goes to an ag high school to get away from everything. I love all the details and about farming, food equipment and rural life. I thought it wrapped up nicely!
Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, Vol. 1 by C.R.C. Payne, StarBite, et al— I’ve been meaning to read this for a long time, and it was mentioned in the comments of my superhero comics rec list, so I finally got around to it. I ended up getting it on paper because the endless scroll webtoon format isn’t great for my hands.
It’s like a cute slice of life comic about the batfam. It’s got a very fic vibe, things are chill and everyone more or less gets along. Which sounds like exactly what I want in a batfam comic but for this first volume at least, felt a little flat actually. I wanted a bit more conflict or angst or something. I’m generally pretty happy with low conflict personal stakes stuff, but I guess these versions of the character feel a little shallow. Each story is so short, like five pages, its just hard to get much depth in that length.
(I’ll probably read some more of this because it is cute and free online. Maybe if I space out the episodes more it will not only not bother my hands as much but feel less bland.
X-men: The Animated Series season 1— Since I'm more open to Superhero media these days, R suggested we watch this animated series from the 90’s. It’s fun! I like that it's got a big team, though it does mean most characters don’t get much screentime. I also like that they are pretty much just fighting for mutant civil rights. There’s a lot less for me to suspend my moral disbelief about here than in most superhero stories I’ve encountered recently.
Hirayasumi, vol 3+4 by Keigo Shinzō— This continues to be very charming. I’m loving all the little details.The cityscapes here feel so warm and lived in! I'm not sure if it's a slice of life manga thing, a manga thing or just an artifact of my limited selection but I've been really enjoying the land/cityscapes in the slice of life manga I've been reading recently
Content note: fatphobia/diet culture
Silver Spoon, vol 14-15 by Hiromu Arakawa— I’m working on a rec list of slice of life manga and I was reminded that I’ve never read the last two volumes of this series. I'd always meant to reread the rest of the series but that felt like too much of a project. So I ended up just reading these last two volumes – it wasn’t that hard to pick up, there’s helpful story summary in the front of each volume.
This is a charming story about a city kid who goes to an ag high school to get away from everything. I love all the details and about farming, food equipment and rural life. I thought it wrapped up nicely!
Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, Vol. 1 by C.R.C. Payne, StarBite, et al— I’ve been meaning to read this for a long time, and it was mentioned in the comments of my superhero comics rec list, so I finally got around to it. I ended up getting it on paper because the endless scroll webtoon format isn’t great for my hands.
It’s like a cute slice of life comic about the batfam. It’s got a very fic vibe, things are chill and everyone more or less gets along. Which sounds like exactly what I want in a batfam comic but for this first volume at least, felt a little flat actually. I wanted a bit more conflict or angst or something. I’m generally pretty happy with low conflict personal stakes stuff, but I guess these versions of the character feel a little shallow. Each story is so short, like five pages, its just hard to get much depth in that length.
(I’ll probably read some more of this because it is cute and free online. Maybe if I space out the episodes more it will not only not bother my hands as much but feel less bland.
X-men: The Animated Series season 1— Since I'm more open to Superhero media these days, R suggested we watch this animated series from the 90’s. It’s fun! I like that it's got a big team, though it does mean most characters don’t get much screentime. I also like that they are pretty much just fighting for mutant civil rights. There’s a lot less for me to suspend my moral disbelief about here than in most superhero stories I’ve encountered recently.
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Afterward I felt that I should have recognized Brian Fairbairn and Karl Eccleston's Tommies (2022) at once as the work of the same filmmakers who introduced half the internet to Polari with Putting on the Dish (2015), not least because the two short films make such a nice double feature for the viewer who shares their abiding interest in historical diction, coded communications, and the infectious paranoia of the pre-decriminalization queer male UK. Dense for their snapshot runtimes, they require a similar willingness from their audience to entertain the past on its own terms and learn how to listen to it, whether it's a bombshell of intricate argot or an event horizon of the politely unspeakable.
Six pyrotechnic minutes on Hampstead Heath in 1962, Putting on the Dish is the wittier, higher-wire of the two, sustaining even through its hard zag of an ending a rapid-fire exposition of Polari to scream for. On top of a crash course in the range and variety of marginalized influences that cascaded into one voraciously colorful anti-language, it concisely demonstrates how two strangers side by side on a public park bench could have anatomized the exuberantly unexpurgated adventures of acquaintances or exchanged their own appraisals of well-packaged passers-by, openly under the radar of Lily Law. "Real fantabulosa bit of hard." Its barbed ciphers form a fragile safe space, advanced as casually as a noncommittal naff or bona and then more colloquially relaxed into with talk of floweries and dinarly and disappointingly dolly HPs. "Nada to vada in the larder?" – "Bijou." Nothing else automatically links the bolder and cagier persons of Steve Wickenden and Neil Chinneck—the invaluable screenplay gives their camp names as Maureen and Roberta—but in their shared appreciation of a zinger of defiant backchat, the hillside seems tranquil with possibility, at least until recalled to the realities that oblige a furtive countercultural jargon in the first place. Polari defaults so naturally to irony, getting a heart-punch out of it is an achievement, one of the few direct gestures in a vignette that rewards cryptography. Even the book in its pink jacket encodes its own implications. What English signals is nothing to say.
Down to the riddle of its title, Tommies is the more somberly ambitious slow burn, circling its fifteen minutes in the wings of the haut ton in 1814 around an invented yet all too imaginable coda to the infamous treatment of the Vere Street Coterie. An exercise in negative space, it never looks inside the molly house itself, shows nothing of the men who patronized it except through their social radioactivity, the cishet fascination with their queer customs. "When the police raided their den, they found a dozen men in a bed in one room and in the other a midwife helping a female grenadier give birth to a Wiltshire loaf!" Its Mayfair house is a curdled chocolate box, thick with the stifling half-light of a summer's evening and frantic with the trills and flutters of canaries like the tight catch in a throat or the snap of an expertly wielded fan. Sarah Winter as Georgina Ashton has a look of Psyche not only because of the white fillet her bronze-dark hair is caught up with, but because she stands on the black-and-white chequers of the stair hall as if facing into hell. How she fits into the loose, allusive swirl of gossip that gradually overtakes the women's conversation may be clocked first by students of the queer Regency, but it still has to be deciphered from the ellipses left between the more overt shocks as the cross-currents of schadenfreude, sympathy, and self-preservation gather to a point of no return. As with so much paranoid cinema, even at pocket-size, the question of who knows what is really asking the use of which the knowledge will be made. "When a man holds fire to his chest, it is not only his own clothes he burns." It's a tense, trickily layered tour-de-force for its all-female ensemble—the rest of its cameos are precisely razored in by Marion Bailey, Claudia Jolly, Elizabeth Roberts, and Susie Trayling—and it doesn't not land the wraparound of its final scenes to the unsettled Gainsborough of its cold open, but it feels like more of a fragment than its predecessor despite or because of its greater craft. Its apophatic technique might have to let up for a feature. As a chip of history, it can still haunt.
Beyond their adroit ear and eye for period detail, both films are attractive little objects. Shot on open-air digital by Benjamin Barber, Putting on the Dish has a sort of Eastmancolor overcast that suits both the year and the season; its men look unglamorous and attainable, the imperfections of their faces as expressive as the artifice of their language. Tommies looks like a heritage ghost on slightly powdery 16 mm, a gallery of revealingly shadowed portraits hung by DP Brian Fawcett; its women emerge from their era with all the mixed and inconvenient reality of facts escaping the historical record. I can best compliment the characterfully inhabited costume design by Oliver Cronk by invoking Alexandra Byrne. Impressively, neither feels like just another whack of gay tragedy even when they focus so intimately on the never-beneficial ramifications of a criminalized life; they are too vivid and compassionate, interested in all of their players regardless of their effects. I watched them courtesy of their writer-director-editors' YouTube and would be intrigued by any further foreign countries—how differently and how recognizably things are done there—they choose to add to their many-voiced queer mosaic. This English brought to you by my bona backers at Patreon.
Six pyrotechnic minutes on Hampstead Heath in 1962, Putting on the Dish is the wittier, higher-wire of the two, sustaining even through its hard zag of an ending a rapid-fire exposition of Polari to scream for. On top of a crash course in the range and variety of marginalized influences that cascaded into one voraciously colorful anti-language, it concisely demonstrates how two strangers side by side on a public park bench could have anatomized the exuberantly unexpurgated adventures of acquaintances or exchanged their own appraisals of well-packaged passers-by, openly under the radar of Lily Law. "Real fantabulosa bit of hard." Its barbed ciphers form a fragile safe space, advanced as casually as a noncommittal naff or bona and then more colloquially relaxed into with talk of floweries and dinarly and disappointingly dolly HPs. "Nada to vada in the larder?" – "Bijou." Nothing else automatically links the bolder and cagier persons of Steve Wickenden and Neil Chinneck—the invaluable screenplay gives their camp names as Maureen and Roberta—but in their shared appreciation of a zinger of defiant backchat, the hillside seems tranquil with possibility, at least until recalled to the realities that oblige a furtive countercultural jargon in the first place. Polari defaults so naturally to irony, getting a heart-punch out of it is an achievement, one of the few direct gestures in a vignette that rewards cryptography. Even the book in its pink jacket encodes its own implications. What English signals is nothing to say.
Down to the riddle of its title, Tommies is the more somberly ambitious slow burn, circling its fifteen minutes in the wings of the haut ton in 1814 around an invented yet all too imaginable coda to the infamous treatment of the Vere Street Coterie. An exercise in negative space, it never looks inside the molly house itself, shows nothing of the men who patronized it except through their social radioactivity, the cishet fascination with their queer customs. "When the police raided their den, they found a dozen men in a bed in one room and in the other a midwife helping a female grenadier give birth to a Wiltshire loaf!" Its Mayfair house is a curdled chocolate box, thick with the stifling half-light of a summer's evening and frantic with the trills and flutters of canaries like the tight catch in a throat or the snap of an expertly wielded fan. Sarah Winter as Georgina Ashton has a look of Psyche not only because of the white fillet her bronze-dark hair is caught up with, but because she stands on the black-and-white chequers of the stair hall as if facing into hell. How she fits into the loose, allusive swirl of gossip that gradually overtakes the women's conversation may be clocked first by students of the queer Regency, but it still has to be deciphered from the ellipses left between the more overt shocks as the cross-currents of schadenfreude, sympathy, and self-preservation gather to a point of no return. As with so much paranoid cinema, even at pocket-size, the question of who knows what is really asking the use of which the knowledge will be made. "When a man holds fire to his chest, it is not only his own clothes he burns." It's a tense, trickily layered tour-de-force for its all-female ensemble—the rest of its cameos are precisely razored in by Marion Bailey, Claudia Jolly, Elizabeth Roberts, and Susie Trayling—and it doesn't not land the wraparound of its final scenes to the unsettled Gainsborough of its cold open, but it feels like more of a fragment than its predecessor despite or because of its greater craft. Its apophatic technique might have to let up for a feature. As a chip of history, it can still haunt.
Beyond their adroit ear and eye for period detail, both films are attractive little objects. Shot on open-air digital by Benjamin Barber, Putting on the Dish has a sort of Eastmancolor overcast that suits both the year and the season; its men look unglamorous and attainable, the imperfections of their faces as expressive as the artifice of their language. Tommies looks like a heritage ghost on slightly powdery 16 mm, a gallery of revealingly shadowed portraits hung by DP Brian Fawcett; its women emerge from their era with all the mixed and inconvenient reality of facts escaping the historical record. I can best compliment the characterfully inhabited costume design by Oliver Cronk by invoking Alexandra Byrne. Impressively, neither feels like just another whack of gay tragedy even when they focus so intimately on the never-beneficial ramifications of a criminalized life; they are too vivid and compassionate, interested in all of their players regardless of their effects. I watched them courtesy of their writer-director-editors' YouTube and would be intrigued by any further foreign countries—how differently and how recognizably things are done there—they choose to add to their many-voiced queer mosaic. This English brought to you by my bona backers at Patreon.
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zhoumojun: welcome to our danmei club
zhoumojun: I mean our chinese learning server
zhoumojun: I mean our chinese learning server
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09.07.2026 07:10 pm
Judge doesn't like Elon Musk settlement with SEC, but says court can't block it
Posted by arstechnica_feed
arstechnica_feedA federal judge reluctantly approved a $1.5 million settlement between Elon Musk and the Trump administration despite raising numerous concerns about a deal that lets Musk get off lightly for a rule violation that allegedly harmed Twitter investors.
In an order approving the deal, US District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said she "has significant misgivings about the settlement" between Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and described "red flags" in the SEC's decision-making. This isn't surprising given that she previously questioned whether the deal is tainted by corruption. But there is a high legal bar for rejecting the settlement, and the circumstances do not meet "that high threshold," she wrote yesterday.
"That means that this Court must accept the Parties’ consent judgment," Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, wrote. "Whether the Executive Branch (through the SEC) has done enough to hold Mr. Musk to account for his alleged violation is, like many other issues, for our citizenry to decide at the ballot box."
09.07.2026 06:57 pm
OpenAI may have made a fatal misstep in copyright fight with news orgs
Posted by arstechnica_feed
arstechnica_feedOpenAI is facing calls for "serious sanctions" after fighting to keep news organizations from snooping through millions of logs to find evidence of users skirting their paywalls by prompting ChatGPT to regurgitate their articles.
This evidence is considered among the most important to both sides, potentially either dooming OpenAI as an infringer or exonerating its chatbot technology as a transformative fair use of news sites' content.
In a sanctions motion Thursday, news organizations suing OpenAI—led by The New York Times—accused the AI firm of repeatedly lying for years to conceal evidence of infringement that could hobble OpenAI's defense.
I've been on jury duty this week, which involved a lot of waiting around, so I finished a library book, did a lot of knitting, and stress-wrote a fic.
Ain't No-one Else To Blame But Me (1464 words) by Glinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov
Additional Tags: Siblings, Hockey, Family Dynamics, Sibling Rivalry
Summary: Alexei’s first love was hockey; it did not love him back.
Anyway, what else? Movies! I have been watching them!
Pretty much on the spur of the moment, I went to see my local art house cinema’s Mystery Movie last Friday night. (My horror movie buddy, texted me the night before to see if I fancied it, we’ve done a horror mystery movie before and that was great but I wasn’t certain about one where I didn’t even know the genre. However, I haven’t see this friend in ages - she got married earlier this year, so she’s been busy - and I wanted that part of the evening, so I decided that actually I do trust the film curator enough that it’ll be a good time so said ‘fuck it’ and agreed.) To our mutual amusement it turned out to be Slither, an early 00s ridiculous splatter-fest that my buddy had actually seen in the cinema when it came out but it’s been so long since she saw it, all she could remember was that it had Nathan Fillion in it - or as she put it ‘the guy from Castle’. We laughed, we squealed, we heckled - a well/badly timed jump scare led to me wearing half a glass of wine - it was a pretty packed screening, full of fellow film nerds also having a good time. (Was it a good movie? No. Was it a good time? Absolutely. We do not require our horror movies to be good, though we like it when they are, but we do need them to commit to the bit.) And then afterwards, we went for cocktails and spent a glorious couple of hours ripping it apart, analysing the tropes and generally nerding out about horror movies, in between catching up on life.
My original plan for Friday night was to go and see The Mandolorian and Grogu because that seemed a good time for a Friday night when I wanted to turn my brain off and enjoy some action. The screenings were pretty limited near me, but I spotted there was one Sunday lunchtime, so I zoomed home from swimming and made it to that one. My main criticism of this film is that I think it wasn’t sure who it’s audience was, it didn’t seem to be willing to commit to whether it was a family film or not. There were whole sections with Grogu and the little mechanic aliens that were clearly aimed at kids, but a big chunk of the plot is all bounty hunters and gladiator style fights to the death. So like tonally, a bit all over the place, I wish they’d decided what kind of film they were making because for the record I’d have watched either version but there was a bit of whiplash going on there. (You could have cut a good half an hour/forty-five minutes out of it with no really storytelling loss, but I enjoyed spending time with those characters so it didn’t drag.) But, I can’t claim that I didn’t enjoy it. I watched three seasons of the Mandolorian purely for Djin and Grogu learning out to be a family and fighting bad guys, I’d likely have watched another three, so I was quite happy to watch another two and a bit hours of them doing their thing. Plus Sigourney Weaver as a New Republic senior officer, all very moral relativist but coming through in the crunch nonetheless, very hot.
And finally! I’ve had a documentary open in a tab on youtube for about six months, after reading a blog post about it somewhere, and I finally got round to watching it. Listers is a charming little indie documentary film by two brothers who discover the concept of competitive birdwatching, fall down a rabbithole investigating and end up spending a year living in a van making a film about doing their own ‘Big Year’. It’s both delightful and bizarre, just a fascinating deep dive into this whole other world and it’s dramas and foibles by two guys who’re outside it enough to see it’s eccentricities and have perspective on them, and fully aware that they have in fact been sucked into the culture of it. It’s a film made with a great deal of affection but also a clear sense of the ridiculous.
Ain't No-one Else To Blame But Me (1464 words) by Glinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov
Additional Tags: Siblings, Hockey, Family Dynamics, Sibling Rivalry
Summary: Alexei’s first love was hockey; it did not love him back.
Anyway, what else? Movies! I have been watching them!
Pretty much on the spur of the moment, I went to see my local art house cinema’s Mystery Movie last Friday night. (My horror movie buddy, texted me the night before to see if I fancied it, we’ve done a horror mystery movie before and that was great but I wasn’t certain about one where I didn’t even know the genre. However, I haven’t see this friend in ages - she got married earlier this year, so she’s been busy - and I wanted that part of the evening, so I decided that actually I do trust the film curator enough that it’ll be a good time so said ‘fuck it’ and agreed.) To our mutual amusement it turned out to be Slither, an early 00s ridiculous splatter-fest that my buddy had actually seen in the cinema when it came out but it’s been so long since she saw it, all she could remember was that it had Nathan Fillion in it - or as she put it ‘the guy from Castle’. We laughed, we squealed, we heckled - a well/badly timed jump scare led to me wearing half a glass of wine - it was a pretty packed screening, full of fellow film nerds also having a good time. (Was it a good movie? No. Was it a good time? Absolutely. We do not require our horror movies to be good, though we like it when they are, but we do need them to commit to the bit.) And then afterwards, we went for cocktails and spent a glorious couple of hours ripping it apart, analysing the tropes and generally nerding out about horror movies, in between catching up on life.
My original plan for Friday night was to go and see The Mandolorian and Grogu because that seemed a good time for a Friday night when I wanted to turn my brain off and enjoy some action. The screenings were pretty limited near me, but I spotted there was one Sunday lunchtime, so I zoomed home from swimming and made it to that one. My main criticism of this film is that I think it wasn’t sure who it’s audience was, it didn’t seem to be willing to commit to whether it was a family film or not. There were whole sections with Grogu and the little mechanic aliens that were clearly aimed at kids, but a big chunk of the plot is all bounty hunters and gladiator style fights to the death. So like tonally, a bit all over the place, I wish they’d decided what kind of film they were making because for the record I’d have watched either version but there was a bit of whiplash going on there. (You could have cut a good half an hour/forty-five minutes out of it with no really storytelling loss, but I enjoyed spending time with those characters so it didn’t drag.) But, I can’t claim that I didn’t enjoy it. I watched three seasons of the Mandolorian purely for Djin and Grogu learning out to be a family and fighting bad guys, I’d likely have watched another three, so I was quite happy to watch another two and a bit hours of them doing their thing. Plus Sigourney Weaver as a New Republic senior officer, all very moral relativist but coming through in the crunch nonetheless, very hot.
And finally! I’ve had a documentary open in a tab on youtube for about six months, after reading a blog post about it somewhere, and I finally got round to watching it. Listers is a charming little indie documentary film by two brothers who discover the concept of competitive birdwatching, fall down a rabbithole investigating and end up spending a year living in a van making a film about doing their own ‘Big Year’. It’s both delightful and bizarre, just a fascinating deep dive into this whole other world and it’s dramas and foibles by two guys who’re outside it enough to see it’s eccentricities and have perspective on them, and fully aware that they have in fact been sucked into the culture of it. It’s a film made with a great deal of affection but also a clear sense of the ridiculous.
09.07.2026 03:33 pm
Surprised doctors find 10-inch worm in man's groin during elective surgery
Posted by arstechnica_feed
arstechnica_feedWhen surgeons dug into a man's groin to repair a painless bulge, they made the unexpected discovery of a living, 10-inch-long (26 cm) worm snug in his abdomen. Adding to the oddity, the man told the surgeons that this had actually happened to him before, according to a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The 71-year-old man had opted to have surgery to repair the bulge, which was an inguinal hernia. These types of protrusions are fairly common, particularly in older men, and occur when a small amount of abdominal contents, such as fat or a bit of intestines, slips through a gap or weak point in the muscles and tissues of the abdominal wall. This bodily leakage creates an external bulge that, in some cases, can be painful and uncomfortable. If the bulge's contents become stuck and pinched off, it can even create a life-threatening situation called a strangulated hernia. But, in other cases, the escaped innards are painless and loose and can be temporarily put back in place by simple, gentle massage.
Most people with inguinal hernias will need surgery at some point to patch up their weak abdominal wall. But, for older men with no pain or discomfort, doctors may suggest watchful waiting, delaying surgery until the need is clear. This was the case for the man. But he elected to repair the inguinal hernia, which was on his right side.
09.07.2026 02:45 pm
Conspiracies and regrets abound in Dune: Part Three trailer
Posted by arstechnica_feed
arstechnica_feedWe haven't seen much footage to date for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Three, other than the broody and haunting extended teaser Warner Bros. dropped in March. But now we've got a shiny new trailer jam-packed with tantalizing hints of what to expect, and plenty of Easter eggs to delight avid book fans.
(Spoilers for first two films in the franchise below.)
As previously reported, in 2021’s Dune, we first met Frank Herbert’s iconic anti-hero, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet). That film culminated in the brutal defeat of House Atreides by rival House Harkonnen, with Paul and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), fleeing to the desert and taking refuge among the Fremen. Among them is Chani (Zendaya), whom Paul has been seeing in visions all along.
