My younger brother, the middle child, was fascinated by the refrigerator around age 2 or 3. He figured out a way to open the door, and loved putting random things in it. My mom was a 1st grade teacher (now retired) and we were hosting her annual End of the School Year party. A couple […]
According to German outlet BILD, “penis-gate” is “shaking the world of ski jumping” and there is “heated discussion behind the scenes about testicles and penises”.
It’s claimed that there are concerns that some athletes are injecting hyaluronic acid into their genitals in a bid to have a better chance of winning.
Crotch stuffing is another method believed to be undertaken by athletes. The surface area of ski jumping suits have a huge effect on performance, specifically stability and floating in the air.
The suits are regulated to millimetres and must match the athlete’s body measurements in terms of chest, waist, hips, thighs and more. These measurements happen before each season, with a 3D scanner which determines their stride length, measured from the lowest point in the genital area.
A bigger suit and a larger manhood can aid performance by reducing the rate of descent and there are subtle attempts to achieve those necessary marginal gains.
Previously silicone condoms were a way to cheat the system before the measurements but now acid injection is reportedly being utilised.
Controversy in the field of competitive penis-measuring
If someone is willing to put needles into their dick to gain an extra millimeter of fabric? Go for it, buddy. Good luck and god speed
I put up a pdf files of 8 protest images as a digital download on my shop for just 5 bucks for anyone who wants them. They’re for personal use of protest in whatever form.
Too much movement makes your joints hurt and too little movement also makes your joints hurt. This would imply that there’s an optimal amount of movement that allows your joints to not hurt. This is a lie.
For the first few chapters that I read, I was enjoying Ava Morgyn's The Bane Witch, as heroine Piers Corbin heroically Gone Girled herself out of an abusive marriage by faking a combo poisoning-drowning and flailed her injured way north to seek refuge with a mysterious aunt, accidentally leaving a fairly significant trail behind her. Satisfying! Suspenseful! I was looking forward to seeing how she was gonna get out of this one!
Then Piers did indeed get north to the aunt and tap into her Family Birthright of Magical Revenge Poisoning. As the actual plot geared up, the more I understood what type of good time I was being expected to have, and, alas, the more it did, the less of a good time I was having.
So the way the family magic works is that all of the Corbin women have the magical ability -- nay, compulsion! -- to eat poison ingredients and convert them internally into a toxin that they can -- nay, must! -- use to murder Bad Men. It's always Men. They're always Bad. They know the men are Bad because they are also granted magical visions explaining how Bad they are. They absolutely never kill women (there are only ever women born in this family; they have to give male babies away at birth in case they accidentally kill them with their poison, and I don't think Ava Morgyn has ever heard of a trans person) or the innocent!
...except of course that the whole family is actually threatening to kill Piers, to protect themselves, if she doesn't accept her powers and start heroically murdering Bad Men. But OTHER THAN THAT they absolutely never kill women, or the innocent, so please have no qualms on that account! Piers' aunt explains: "Yes, Piers. Whatever has happened to you, you must never forget that there are predators and there are prey. We hunt the former, not the latter."
By the way, both irredeemably Bad Men that form the focus of Badness in this book -- Piers' evil and abusive husband, and the local serial killer who is also incidentally on the loose -- are shown to have been abused in childhood by irredeemably Bad Women, but we're not getting into that. There are Predators and there are Prey!
The book wants to make sure we understand that it's very important, righteous and ethical for the Cobin family to keep doing what they're doing because everybody knows nobody believes abused women and therefore vigilante justice is the only form of justice available. There are two cops in the book, by the way. One of them is the nice and ethical local sheriff who is Piers' love interest, who is allowing her to help him hunt the local serial killer despite being suspicious that she may have poisoned several people. The other is the nice and ethical local cop investigating her supposed murder back home, who is desperate to prove she's alive because she saved his life and he's very grateful. He understands about abuse, because his name is Reyes and he's from the Big City and his mother and sister were both abused by Bad Men. The problem with these good and handsome cops is that they're actually not willing enough to murder people, which is where Piers comes in:
HANDSOME GOOD COP BOYFRIEND: You don't want to help me arrest him, do you? You want to kill him. PIERS: Doesn't he deserve it? HANDSOME GOOD COP BOYFRIEND: That's not for us to decide. PIERS: Isn't it? This is our community. You're an authority in maintaining law and order, and I'm a victim of domestic and sexual violence. Surely, there is no one more qualified than us.
This book was a USA Today bestseller, which does not surprise me. It taps into exactly the part of the cultural hindbrain that loves true crime, and serial killers, and violence that you can feel good about, in an uncomplicated way, because it's being meted out to Unquestionably Bad People. Justice is when bad people suffer and die. We're not too worried about how they turned out to be bad people. There are predators, and there are prey.
LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.
I like my ability to be all in and focused in a conversation with a student, especially when it comes to their writing.
I like how I can chain together random things and make something beautiful.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who has been the mouthpiece of President Donald Trump throughout last year in his second term, is now facing flak for getting involved in something she wouldn’t really like her name being associated with. People on the internet are dragging her down and calling her a hypocrite, and some are even calling for her boycott, but what is it for? Continue reading to find out.
On January 17, 2026, images of Karoline Leavitt emerged online, which showed her sitting at a restaurant staring into the abyss while someone (possibly her husband) sat across her on the same table. The pictures soon spread all over social media, with many people claiming that they were taken in Fairfax County, Virginia, and the eatery she was sitting in was a Mexican one.
During Donald Trump’s second term as President of the United States, one of the individuals who has emerged as one of his strongest critics is comedian, writer, producer, and talk show host Stephen Colbert. It’s not that he wasn’t a Trump basher earlier, but his demeanour was considerably toned down, compared to now, when he is much bolder and more vocal. I believe that is what happens when someone repeatedly tries to get you out of your job and tarnish your reputation.
If you already didn’t know, Trump and his army of MAGA goons almost got The Late Show with Stephen Colbert cancelled indefinitely on CBS last year. Not only that, to this day, almost every time Colbert makes a joke about Trump or says anything, for that matter, which is very much rooted in reality, he takes offence and goes on a rant on Truth Social, asking for his show’s cancellation. Trump also often claims that Colbert is unpopular and unfunny. Considering all of this, I believe Colbert’s hatred for Trump comes from a place of frustration, and it is justified.
It appears the members of the Trump administration are playing Doofus Olympics amongst themselves because one week one of them is saying something completely obnoxious, and in the next someone else is saying something even more despicable. While I am sure no one can win over the leader of the doofus herd, Trump himself, this individual and her objectionable claims come very, very close.
Trump’s agricultural secretary, Brooke Rollins, is making some bold claims about affording a healthy meal. In a video that is currently circulating on social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), where it has gained significant momentum, Rollins, in a conversation with News Nation, is seen claiming that based on 1,000 simulations run by her and her department, they had concluded that it takes about 3 dollars to be able to afford a meal of “a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla, and one other thing.” What other thing? And 3 dollars? Really? How out of touch does one have to be to come to that conclusion? And apparently, she is the Agriculture Security.
On January 3, 2026, the United States forces under the leadership of Donald Trump conducted an operation in Venezuela and abducted its president, Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Trump’s reasoning for the act was that Maduro was a narco terrorist who was poisoning the lives of Americans by supplying drugs, and that he was a “dictator” who was operating an authoritarian regime in Venezuela and oppressing its people.
In the early days since capturing Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump had mostly maintained a Venezuela-first stance, emphasising during various press conferences that his focus would be on ensuring the safety and well-being of the Venezuelan people. However, Trump, who is often unable to hide his true self in front of people, let it slip a few times, giving people an idea about exactly what he is thinking and feeling. For instance, in one of his press conferences held just after Maduro’s capture, Trump expressed his wish to “run” Venezuela until there could be a proper transition of power. During the same conference, while trying to make it look like he was concerned about the betterment of Venezuelans, Trump also expressed his wish to explore the country’s oil reserves. If these hints weren’t enough for people to understand what Trump was really thinking, his Truth Social post from 2 days ago does.
Elon Musk has spent years branding himself as a free speech absolutist. On Thursday, he demonstrated exactly how conditional that belief really is. The tech guy is bored, so he wants his president boss to invoke the Insurrection Act for fun. Great America, here we are.
On Jan. 15, an X account named “Insurrection Barbie” laid out a cherry-picked explanation of the Insurrection Act. It was complete with a list of historical invocations and a conveniently elastic definition of “rebellion.” Musk soon picked up on the post and replied with four words: “Time to invoke the Insurrection Act.” He had no concern for constitutional limits. He’s just a billionaire urging the president to deploy extraordinary federal power against a U.S. state.
Donald Trump stood in front of the press and talked for minutes about the Nobel Peace Prize he just received. But he never once managed to name Maria Corina Machado. The president is never beating the dementia/Alzheimer’s allegations.
On Friday, reporters asked Trump what he planned to do with the Nobel medal he had received from Machado. In his rehearsed speech, Trump described her simply as “a person” or a “woman.” He repeatedly avoided naming her directly, even as he acknowledged her “very nice gesture” of giving him her award.
Just when it seemed like the government had exhausted every possible way to make milk strange, the White House escalated. We now have Donald Trump as a milkman and a new GOP slogan: “Make Whole Milk Great Again.” Sorry, what was wrong with that earlier?
After the USDA’s baffling “milk mustache” edit of Trump, the White House followed up with something even more surreal. On Jan. 14, they posted an image of Trump striding confidently, suit pressed, posture heroic, carrying multiple crates of milk. And then there was the slogan “Make Whole Milk Great Again.”
Timing is everything. And on January 17, Katie Miller managed to pick the worst possible moment to post a joke about “extra ICE.” Miller logged onto X, snapped a Starbucks photo, and decided irony was appropriate. It wasn’t.
Katie Miller, a vocal defender of hardline immigration enforcement, clearly thought she was being cute on January 17. The former White House press official posted a photo of a Starbucks cup on her X with the scrawled words “EXTRA ICE” and the caption:
The world thought trade wars between the United States and its allies were relics of the past. However, Trump then threw another tantrum about Denmark not selling him Greenland and announced tariffs on European countries. Macron’s response? Anti-coercion Instrument.
On Jan. 17, Trump announced a 10% tariff on imports from eight European countries. This includes Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Finland. He also threatened to raise it to 25% by June, unless Denmark agrees to sell the U.S. “Complete and Total” control of Greenland. But European leaders swiftly rejected the gambit.
On Greenland’s protest lines, the famous MAGA slogan has been flipped into something intentionally spiteful and unmistakably clear. The bright red Trump hats now read “Make America Go Away.” It started as a cheeky political parody, but has morphed into a massive public statement.
If you scroll through the streets of Nuuk or Copenhagen right now, you might see something that looks very familiar. Bright red baseball caps with bold white lettering. At first glance, they appear to be Trump’s MAGA hats that popularized his slogan “Make America Great Again.” But look closer, and they’re way better than those meaningless props.
I keep copious notes on my phone and in commonplace books of raw material for writing. I collect stories from people, interesting words, bits of poetry, images, etc. When I have an idea for something, I page randomly through all of that and see what if anything sticks. Then I do an enormous amount of research (my favorite part of the process) and start a google doc with research notes and chunks of writing. Sometimes I do a sketch to help visualize the motion of the plot. When I wrote a crossover that involved House of Leaves, I sketched the house I was using as my setting so I could keep the physical space in front of me.
Then I write from both ends and the middle in pieces that are gradually stitched together. I'm not great at plots; I let the imagery and characters do the heavy lifting.
Once I have a draft, I rewrite it obsessively until I'm happy with it.
I also generally carry sticky notes and have a lot of things jotted on those. I've been keeping commonplace books since middle school (they were spirals back then), so I have a lot of material. Honestly, I never have used most of it directly in my writing, but I feel like the ideas I have tried out in those pages are like training for when I do write a completed pieces. And sometimes I just enjoy writing short pieces that no one else will ever see, just for me.
I got some request for my process with backgrounds after the Onsen, so this will be a step-by-step-ish doumentation for an American Southwest landscape.
BIG. ASS. CANVAS. like at least one side should be 5000 pixels
Get a shitload of references:
Yeah 42 is enough
3. Rifle through them and sort into ones that feel related to you, or have elements you want to collage together. Make a note of this part on the tumblr post to explain where the fuck you are for the next 6-10 hours.
4. Or, uh. Seventeen minutes. Kinda slapped and scaled them in approximately the size and location I want them.
5. Now I’m gonna spend an outrageous amount of time isolating the exact thing I want from these references and Paper-dolling theminto place
Side note: You want to keep all the references from as close to the same perspective as possible. This is a pretty flat front-on angle so that’s not hard but something on a hill is a BITCH.
6. Okay, now I have everything in approximately the size and location I think I want it to be. All the pieces are on different layers, so I’m going to sketch the individual layers and tweak them into place and sorta quilt them together into a coherent Outline.
These are totally real technical terms.
7. This outlining art Takes A While ™. 3 hours in so far.
It’s worth it tho, not because I’m using the outline as much in the final composition, but this intensely studied loutline helps me get REALLY familiar with the shapes of everything, which is REALLY important when I pick out my Light Source, because I’m going to have to wholesale invent the shading.
Six hours of Linework in!! Stopping for the night so my hand remains functional :)
I have reposted this before but I am always impressed by how well-thought out every spot is. There is no good place to sit. “Oh, Eomer’s cool, I’ll sit with him” but then you will have to listen to Gollum and Bilbo the entire flight. “I’ll sit with Sam!” Pippin and Merry will be turning around the entire flight to talk to him. Sure, you can sit with Elrond, but you’re going to deal with him staring down Aragorn and Arwen. You may love Legolas and Gimli, but will you love sitting BETWEEN them? Just when you see a spot that seems okay, somewhere behind or across the aisle is a terrible option. This is so good. No good seats on the LOTR plane
no i think 17 looks good
No no here’s my cunnng plan. I sit next to Sam and then immediately frodo will want to sit next to Sam and I will offer to trade with him. And then I get the entire two-seater to myself.
I don’t care if I get banned from Delta Airlines, I’m taking seat #1 and rawing the Balrog for eight and a half hours and that’s everyone else’s Problem.
Patient: "I don't want to wait any longer! IN AMERICA, I WOULD HAVE BEEN SEEN ALREADY!"
Doctor: "First of all, Canada is still America. Second of all, we had a car crash victim and a heart attack to deal with, so they took priority."
A Crumbl Cookies shopper in Miami noticed a potential health hazard that’s making him reconsider the company’s soft, tear-apart treats.
Zlatadubois, @zlatadubois, a TikTok content creator with over 15,000 followers, posted a video on Jan. 11 that has managed to garner 33.9 million views within the span of five days. In it, he simply takes a video of something treacherous that has many people rethinking their weekly Crumbl Cookies orders.
I got some request for my process with backgrounds after the Onsen, so this will be a step-by-step-ish doumentation for an American Southwest landscape.
BIG. ASS. CANVAS. like at least one side should be 5000 pixels
Get a shitload of references:
Yeah 42 is enough
3. Rifle through them and sort into ones that feel related to you, or have elements you want to collage together. Make a note of this part on the tumblr post to explain where the fuck you are for the next 6-10 hours.
4. Or, uh. Seventeen minutes. Kinda slapped and scaled them in approximately the size and location I want them.
5. Now I’m gonna spend an outrageous amount of time isolating the exact thing I want from these references and Paper-dolling theminto place
Side note: You want to keep all the references from as close to the same perspective as possible. This is a pretty flat front-on angle so that’s not hard but something on a hill is a BITCH.
6. Okay, now I have everything in approximately the size and location I think I want it to be. All the pieces are on different layers, so I’m going to sketch the individual layers and tweak them into place and sorta quilt them together into a coherent Outline.
These are totally real technical terms.
7. This outlining art Takes A While ™. 3 hours in so far.
It’s worth it tho, not because I’m using the outline as much in the final composition, but this intensely studied loutline helps me get REALLY familiar with the shapes of everything, which is REALLY important when I pick out my Light Source, because I’m going to have to wholesale invent the shading.
Crazy Customer Complaints. I run a bookshop. Some years ago a lady came into the shop wanting to return a book she had bought for her son. “Its’ not suitable for him.” (Mind you, she was the one who found and bought the book. I had barely seen her. ) She produced a very dark […]
(I was part of my old job’s Beta Test Team; not testing our OWN products, oh no. It was a group of one or two people from each department who would double-check any significant patch for the various software suites we use, before pushing it through to the whole work force and suddenly causing a […]
Caller: "Can’t you just give it to me for that rate?”
Me: "Uhm, no, because we don’t have a king room that’s ADA accessible."
Caller: "So you’re discriminating by charging me more for an ADA room!"
Given all space and time, and all history and fiction, which offer of adventure would you be most likely to accept - and which one would you definitely decline?ffutures asked.
Well, I'm tempted to say "none, because I'm chicken and would rather read about those adventures than experience them". But that would be a boring answer, and there are some which don't carry the risk of dying of smallpox or being turned into a Cyberman, one presumes. So, let's see....
Fictional: To get the obvious out of the way first: assuming that I'd live in a universe with the Doctor in it for real (the only universe worth thinking about, according to the Master, who ought to know), and that I would not live in one of those eras where one can google at least asome appearances of his which ought to give me an inkling about the risk travelling with him involves... I think I'd say yes if 'Thirteen offered me a trip with the TARDIS. She's not my favourite Doctor, but she conveys trustworthiness if she wants to, and even if I did manage to look up her companions, thehir rate of not just survival but lack of heartbreak (Yaz always excepted) at the end of their travels with her is promising. Most of the other Doctors would in real life make me think "nah, you seem to be interesting and/or crazy, but I wouldn't trust you to bring me home again".
I would definitely say no to Gandalf. Especially if I were in Bilbo's position. Firstly, stagemanaging an intrusion by loads of uninvited guests is just rude, and secondly, no way you're getting me anywhere near a real life dragon to be torched. No thank you. And that's before we're talking about the travel conditions. I can't ride, and while I do like long hikes, taking these in eras where I could get eaten by trolls... no, really not. I'm just not Burglar material.
Real: If I was dared as Nellie Bly was to travel around the world in 80 Days a la Jules Verne, with a newspaper paying for it, absolutely, I would have tried my best.
Would not have joined: any expedition involving the Artic. I like snow in winter, and I also like to ski, but I like it with the perspective of afterwards returning my heated apartment and being able to take a luxurious long hot bath. Not from the perspective of someone looking for the North West Passage on a sailing boat in the 18th century or someone racing to the Pole in the 20th century. I like my limbs unfrozen and uneaten, thanks.
I did two loads of laundry, hand-washed dishes, went for a walk with Pip and the dogs, baked chicken for the dogs’ meals, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, changed kitty litter (you know it’s Sunday!), and showered.
I went with another one of my own teas today, The Republic of Tea’s Blackberry Sage (Fruity black tea blended with herbs, which tells you nothing, really. Which is funny, because the ingredients just list black tea, natural blackberry and sage. o_O)
I took a nap, and watched two eps of Wild Cards and some Zoo Tampa. My one dismay is that I didn't get any more writing done.
Temps started out at 25.5(F) and reached 31.1. We had the overnight snow plus more snow today. Pip was busy shoveling and snow blowing.
Mom Update:
Mom sounded good on the phone. She said she’d eaten and it had settled fine. My brother visited earlier and Sister A was there when I called.
Photo by keeper Brittany via Memphis Zoo, which writes:
We have an otterly special birthday today! Xia, our eldest Asian small-clawed otter, is celebrating her 20th birthday. Everyone wish Xia a happy birthday! The birthday girl enjoyed lots of extra shrimp, ice treats, and time outside today. 🥳
This birthday is extra special. Asian small-clawed otters typically live around 15 years on average, making Xia’s milestone especially remarkable!
*I work internal IT for a retail company. One day, I’m trying to help a user install some software and it keeps failing. I’ve rebooted the workstation several times, run several different updates including a script that runs gpupdate (group policy update), several deployment cycles from configuration manager among other things and still no luck. […]
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