National Weather Service sez
21 January 2026 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elisemAnd where is this for?
And what do we do?
Which mostly means "Keep yer ass indoors! You, and your little dog too!"
And also means "Look after each other. We keep us safe." OK? OK then.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to finish the bag for the supply depot and start on one for Pow Wow Grounds.
What's the weather going to be doing where you are? And how are the people in your neighborhood?
Half A Moon 2026
21 January 2026 02:34 pmspikedluv![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
halfamoon for the first time. I enjoyed it and have been looking forward to this round. The prompts for this coming round (beginning Feb 1) have been posted HERE.Per the mod, this year is all about archetypes. So I've listed the seven feminine archetypes on the odd number days and then something that plays against that on the even number days.
I’m including the prompts here because I need to think about them some. Yes, I’m thinking they’ll all be Jessica again, but that’s not set in stone.
( prompts )
Wednesday reading
21 January 2026 07:22 pmqueen_ypolitaFinished Life after Life and now agree with the colleague who said at the book group last week that she thought it was good. All the lives Ursula might have lived was a question that remained fascinating right to the end. And the book just kept surprising me. It also made me think about Making History by Stephen Fry, which I read years and years ago, where trying to alter the past to stop Hitler is a key plot point.
Currently reading
Still reading Challenger. No progress on anything else I'm still in the middle of, but I started reading Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. It's been on my to-read list for a couple of years now, but it only occurred to me to check if it was available in the library a couple of weeks ago. For some reason I expected it wouldn't be, but it was actually easily available in the central library sci-fi/fantasy section.
Reading next
Not sure
SAI 2 Halftone/dot brush
21 January 2026 08:03 pmaikoto
A 12yo on Deviantart has probably shared something similar before, but while messing around I found out you can have a dot brush in SAI 2 super easily!
I love to add these to shaded zones when I use CSP, so I'm happy I could make a similar brush in SAI.
I think the texture is pre-installed, but if you don't have it lmk. Also picking a different brush hardness (the buttons in top) gives different outcomes, soft shows only the dots while hard is like using a round pen with dots on its side.
Wednesday Reading Meme
21 January 2026 02:11 pmspikedluvWhat I am Currently Reading: Still working on Husband Material (London Calling) by Alexis Hall.
What I Plan to Read Next: Probably the other library book I have out as I've only got one renewal on it.
a fool for another day
21 January 2026 02:07 pmmusesfoolFor some reason, I woke up with Barely Breathing by Duncan Sheik in my head, and when I wondered to
On the Mets front, they finally got a centerfielder in Luis Robert Jr. I guess if he can stay healthy, he'll be an upgrade over last year, offensively at least, though I am still a Tyrone Taylor fan for his A+ defense. #better call tyrone
In other sports news, my attempt to get interested in basketball seems to have done serious damage to the Knicks. They have been losing a lot lately. Plus, everyone I mentioned it to was like, don't do that. I didn't realize people in my wider circle felt that way about basketball. I guess there's always the Liberty! I should figure out when that season starts. Or the Sirens for hockey, but I don't think they've been very good either. Just a bad time all round for NY sports, I guess. And it's not like I'm a fair weather fan, though this certainly sounds like it - it's just I'd like to root for a team that isn't completely terrible, you know? As a treat!
On the books front, there is finally cover art and a real blurb for Dungeon Crawler Carl 8: Parade of Horribles, but still no Kindle* or e-book edition, so I broke down and pre-ordered the hardcover. (I can't do audiobooks. I've tried.) I also decided to do a reread of the series, because I've been trying to map out all the various stuff that needs resolving - and it is A LOT - so I wanted it to be fresh in my mind. So at some point there will be a post that is basically me as that Charlie Day-at-the-murder-board meme trying to figure it all out. *hands*
*I realize that I probably need to do a "free trial" of Kindle Unlimited to get the Kindle edition but I do not want to do that at this time. As the release date gets closer, we'll see if a Kindle edition shows up and I end up cancelling the hardcover, as I would prefer not to buy a hardcover tbh. I have all the rest on kindle, which is where I do 99.5% of my book-reading these days.
So anyway, I guess for the Wednesday reading meme, I just finished a reread of book 1 of Dungeon Crawler Carl and started rereading book 2: Carl's Doomsday Scenario. And I will probably read book 3: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook after that and so on and so forth. *wry*
***
Birdfeeding
21 January 2026 12:55 pmysabetwordsmithI fed the birds. I've seen a flock of sparrows and at least one starling.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 1/21/26 -- We installed the first of the new latches.
EDIT 1/21/26 -- We installed the second of the new latches.
EDIT 1/21/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 1/21/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
EDIT 1/21/26 -- I put out a peanut suet cake.
EDIT 1/21/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
I am done for the night.
Snowflake Challenge 11: Granting Wishes
21 January 2026 11:42 amysabetwordsmithThis challenge is a follow up to Challenge #5. You've made your own wishlist, now it's time to grant someone else's wish from theirs! This can be as simple as answering a question to creating something from scratch, one wish or many wishes. Let your inspiration run wild!
In your own space, grant someone's wish from Challenge #5. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it and include a link to your own post with the wishes you granted if you feel comfortable doing so.
Be sure to check out other people's creations, whether they're granting your wish or someone else's. If you post any granted wishes elsewhere, we'd love it if you link them to this post.
( Read more... )
Film post: What's Up, Doc? (1972)
21 January 2026 05:13 pmloganberrybunny
This is a 1970s attempt to recapture the energy of the screwball comedies of a third of century earlier – and on the whole it does it very well. A lot of that is down to Barbra Streisand, whose Judy Maxwell is magnetically watchable even when she's being impossibly annoying, which is much of the time. Ryan O'Neal as Dr Howard Bannister looks just enough like a younger Michael Caine to be mildly disconcerting, but he does well too. Not all the jokes land perfectly, but there are so many of them that you don't have to wait long for a better one. The plot is absurd, but it's meant to be so that's okay.
An absolutely fantastic car chase scene, like a cross between Bullitt and Wacky Races and one which instantly became a favourite. The weak link is Eunice Burns (Madeline Kahn), not because of her acting but because of the dated and embarrassing "hey, his actual fiancée is dowdy and whiny, isn't that amusing?" running joke; one late line about her in a courtroom scene is truly awful. Fortunately the rest is so enjoyable as to make this a largely thoroughly entertaining hour and a half. ★★★★
Chris Has A Good Time In None Of These.
21 January 2026 05:20 pmrionaleonhartthreesentenceficathon fills!Are they for fandoms you're in? W... well, no. They're still almost exclusively for the Goes Wrong Show, with one short and spoilery Silent Hill 2 fill. But they are fanfiction nonetheless.
( Silent Hill 2, James, 40 words, prompt: 'I love you. I'm sorry.' )
( Assorted ficlets for the Goes Wrong Show, mainly Chris and Robert, 1,400 words total. )
I was doing so well at keeping to three sentences to begin with! But here we are now.
Adventures in the Public Domain: On Updating Out-of-Copyright Works
21 January 2026 12:15 pmjames_davis_nicoll
Should we attempt to bring older works into the modern age?
Adventures in the Public Domain: On Updating Out-of-Copyright Works
H.Con.Res. 70 and S.Con.Res. 26 regarding Greenland
21 January 2026 11:30 amaurumcalendula posting in thisfinecrewI think it might be a good idea to ask congresspeople to support them.
https://congress.gov/bill/119-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/70
https://congress.gov/bill/119-congress/senate-concurrent-resolution/26
( the main text of both under the cut )
Twinned Trilogy Excerpt: A Whipped Cream Date
21 January 2026 11:49 amduckprintspress
Three books are included in our current Kickstarter, the three combined telling the full story of the Twinned trilogy by Tris Lawrence. The first book is Commit to the Kick; the second is Missed Fortunes, starring Carolyn, a young woman with predictive Talent that works through Tarot readings, and who is biromantic and asexual! She’s not entirely sure what Serina has in mind, or if she’ll be comfortable accepting it, but she’s definitely open to the possibility. And meanwhile, her Talent is changing in unexpected ways…
Blurb:
To solve the problem of now…
Remember what lies behind…
Pass through your hopes and fears…
…to the final outcome.Carolyn knows the Emergence brought her a new community, but it also revealed the existence of people with magical Talent to the scrutiny of the world. Her high school life ended on a tumultuous note, but now that she’s a junior at Pine Hills University, her life has become stable. She has her twin Kit. She has her sorority sisters. She has her Talent and her Tarot cards.
But when the Tower appears in a reading, the world shatters and changes. Kit has left his predictive Talent behind, and Carolyn’s own predictive Talent is changing decidedly unpredictably. She’s seeing visions of fire and destruction, of Shadows moving in the darkness and intruding into the light. And her sorority sister Drea and Drea’s brother Alaric have returned from winter break, warning of looming dangers and the risk of Clan going to war.
Carolyn shouldn’t get involved—doesn’t want to get involved—but with the world crumbling around her and her predictions hinting at worse to come, she can’t imagine not doing what she can. To make matters worse, the only way forward is to reconcile with her past, but Carolyn isn’t sure how to do that nor why it seems so important to the world that she does.
Commit to the Kick and Missed Fortunes have both been released previously in print through Duck Prints Press; the third book of the trilogy, Into the Split, is coming out for the first time using funds from this crowdfunding campaign.
Learn more about all three books, and buy one, two, or all three of them, by supporting our Kickstarter campaign today!
(we hit our base funding goal yesterday, but we’ve got lots of great stretch goals for bonus content, and funding above our base helps raise the amount Tris Lawrence earns for her efforts in writing this awesome series of modern-with-magic books!)
Wednesday attended the Fellows' monthly symposia
21 January 2026 04:47 pmoursinWhat I read
Finished I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz, though will cop to only skimming the final section 'Fiorucci: the Book' (1980) about which I was a bit WTF? and 'what was she on?'
Over the weekend saw a review somewhere of the latest work by Madeleine Gray speaking well of her first novel Green Dot (2024) so thought I might see what it was like, especially as it was at a very reasonable price on Kobo - gave up about a third or so in. Did not care about the narrator or her situation.
A bit of sortes e-reader (inadvertently opening a book) started a supernatural thriller but I couldn't work out whether it was part of a series and I was supposed to know who these characters and their predicament were, or whether I was supposed to work it out over chapters jumping back and forward over time and didn't feel grabbed. May return because that might be me?
Dick Francis, Risk (1977), where I realised I have recently identified a Francis pattern such that I could finger a certain character very early on as likely to be implicated in bad stuff going down.
On the go
Have been dipping into Timothy d'Arch Smith, The Stammering Librarian (2025), some further collected essays, including one on a person of research interest, and a rather fun Anthony Powell parody.
Dick Francis, The Edge (1988), which is the one involving a lush train journey, with additional Staged Murder Mystery, across Canada (reverse direction to the way I did it).
Up next
Well, the local history society publications in which I was interested have been ordered and have arrived.
Book Club Voting and January Read
21 January 2026 12:00 pmseleneheart
bookclub_dw is currently voting for our February read. Voting will run through January 31, 2026. The poll can be found here: https://bookclub-dw.dreamwidth.org/1556.htmlWe are reading The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst as our book for January. Please join us if you would like participate in the discussion! The discussion post will go up on January 31, 2026.
life ticking along
21 January 2026 04:31 pmwychwoodI also woke up at 03:18 yesterday morning and didn't manage more than a few minutes of dozing thereafter, so had a fairly miserable day; beaten, however, by my swimming buddy (who lives around the corner and has been kindly giving me a lift to and from swimming while I'm staying with Mum), whose brother was just diagnosed with CJD, of all things. Apparently there's one or two people diagnosed per million each year, but talk about appalling luck.
Anyway last night I got rather more sleep, so have felt much more at peace with the world today and even accomplished some useful work tasks. I'll need all the available brain for choir tonight, though, this piece seems to be taking a lot of work somehow even though it's Haydn and not exactly difficult.
I have read zero books, but I have made some progress on booklogging, so it's not all bad.
Fandom Snowflake Challenge #11
21 January 2026 11:44 amreeby10 posting in snowflake_challengeRemember that there is no official deadline, so feel free to join in at any time, or go back and do challenges you've missed.
( Fandom Snowflake Challenge #111 )
And just as a reminder: this is a low pressure, fun challenge. If you aren't comfortable doing a particular challenge, then don't. We aren't keeping track of who does what.
This is about selling people
21 January 2026 04:37 pmrydra_wongThey are legally Danish citzens. Greenland is largely self-governing, with the possibility of becoming independent if they choose to.
Denmark can't "sell" them or their country because Denmark does not own them.
And after a number of centuries and some debate, a general consensus was arrived at that selling people is not ethically acceptable, you know?
Even if they wanted to, Denmark can't "sell" Trump Greenland any more than the UK could sell him Scotland.
Also N.B. 85-90% of the Greenlanders are Inuit.
I am very certain that this is absolutely about thinking that Native people don't really count as citizens and they don't really own their land; it is Terra Nullius, and they can be sold off in a deal between the "real" nations of Denmark and the US.
(Or their land can be sold out from under them and they can just be forced elsewhere, which I'm sure Trump would be just fine with.)
If the US wanted to try to ethically acquire Greenland, it could talk to the government of Greenland and offer them a great deal with significant benefits if they wanted to become independent and then have a free association deal with the US.
Or rather, it could have, maybe, because now the Greenlanders are fucking pissed off and scared over the threats and offers to buy them, and if they have to choose between the US and Denmark they are unambiguously choosing Denmark:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgx8w4pgk0o
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/14/us-invasion-threat-greenland-trump-denmark
2026 Project: Personal Calendar...
21 January 2026 11:22 ammdehners posting in gardeningIt's pretty simple; just Journal what happens each month in the natural world around you. I live presently in E Tennessee and actually, the Solstices and Equinoxes pretty well "map" here in Loudon County but we can fine tune things.
This yr, of course, had to be anomalous;>! Normally, within a couple weeks of Winter Solstice we get temps in the high teens. This yr until last week it had actually got to 70F! Now, it's "seasonal" with today in the 40's.Due to the warmth my neighbor's early Daffs budded up and right now they don't look like they'd recover. Me? Mine are breaking ground and at least one Snowdrop has buds, though most are just breaking ground a well.
We've also got Canadian Geese, Ducks and at least one Heron here on the inlet....a BIT early.
Preliminary name for 1st month; "Frikkn Freezing Moon";>!
Cheers,
Pat
Scourge of the Spaceways
21 January 2026 11:27 ammarycatelli posting in booksStarquest book 5. And it is seriously a running story. Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes.
( Read more... )
Scourge of the Spaceways
21 January 2026 11:27 ammarycatelli posting in book_loveStarquest book 5. And it is seriously a running story. Spoilers ahead for the earlier volumes.
( Read more... )
January Challenge (4 of 5)
21 January 2026 11:43 pmfred_mouse posting in unclutterHow did the decluttering of the work space(s) go? Did you spend time looking for things that could go, move a thing or two, or have a wildly successful week? Or did you work on a different space instead?
For week four we are moving from decluttering spaces in order to make them more welcoming to us, to making our space more welcoming to others. What this might look like
- Is it difficult to get into the house? Option: work out what of the stuff in the front hall / entrance / verandah / front step is useful to have there, and deal with (some of) the rest. If that stuff is clutter to be rehomed, maybe make the getting it out of the house a priority
- Is there nowhere for visitors to put things when they visit? Option: go through the shoe rack / coat rack / other storage and getting rid of what you don't use so that there is space for visitors to leave their shoes / coats / other when they visit
- Is there nowhere for a visitor to sit? Option: Clear a second chair! Or a path to a second chair!
- Are there too many choices of tea, and none of them good? Option: get rid of the stale tea so nobody accidentally gets served it. Do not suffer stale tea.
- Have your serving plates / company coffee mugs / tea cups seen better days? Are there good ones that never get appreciated? Consider: ditch the dodgy, have the joy of using the nice ones (and if the nice ones aren't ever going to get used, is it time to send them out into the world to bring joy to someone else?)
- if you have a car and are a person who provides transport, is there clutter in there making life awkward?
Remember, this is a gentle challenge, and if you get one thing progressed, that is a big win even when you can't give yourself the credit.
How To Help If You Are Outside Minnesota
21 January 2026 03:30 pmrydra_wonghttps://naomikritzer.com/2026/01/21/how-to-help-if-you-are-outside-minnesota/
This also has advice on how to start preparing for if and when this shit comes to your home state.
(If you are in Minnesota: https://naomikritzer.com/2026/01/19/how-to-help-twin-cities-residents/ )
How To Help If You Are Outside Minnesota
21 January 2026 03:29 pmrydra_wong posting in thisfinecrewhttps://naomikritzer.com/2026/01/21/how-to-help-if-you-are-outside-minnesota/
This also has advice on how to start preparing for if and when this shit comes to your home state.
(If you are in Minnesota: https://naomikritzer.com/2026/01/19/how-to-help-twin-cities-residents/ )
What Am I Reading Wednesday, January 21, 2026
21 January 2026 10:16 amjust_ann_nowWhat I Just Finished Reading
Sing Like A Fish:How Sound Rules Life Underwater, by Amorina Kingdon.
cairistiona, it was extremely readable and enjoyable! I learned so much. There is a fish, along the Pacific Coast, with mating calls! I can't even imagine. Less enjoyable, but still very worthwhile, was Birds at Rest: The Behavior and Ecology of Avian Sleep, by Roger F. Pasquier. (Academics should not be allowed to publish approachable, engaging prefaces to their books, if the books themselves are going to be pretty dry. That's deceptive!) *grin* But again, I learned a lot about avian behavior that had never occurred to me before. @cairistiona, an even more enjoyable book about fish is What A Fish Knows, by Jonathan Balcomb, which I remember I really liked. On the fiction side, Malinalli, by Veronica Chapa, had inconsistent characterization and confusing plotting. For Dreamwidth Book Bingo: Author's Debut, as well as Goodreads Tale Spinners challenge (Fairy tale or mythology retelling).
An absolute impulse purchase (boy, have I been doing a lot of that lately) was What If...Loki Was Worthy?. An odd impulse because I haven't been into Marvel in ages and am several movies behind. (Sorry, Captain America Sam. Sorry, Bucky.) If this book had been fic, it would be Crack!fic, an absolutely wacky and enjoyable ride. My absolutely favorite Loki Redemption fic, though, is "Monsters", by coneycat, the opening of her "Housemates"series.
What I Am Currently Reading
Today I
What I Am Reading Next
I have a list of library holds as long as my arm, which I plan to pick up tomorrow. Which is crazy, because it isn't like I don't have another virtual stack of ebooks on my iPad. I just like walking to the library, I guess.
Question of the Day:
Snow:Yay! or Snow
(That would be me. It's not that I mind snow, per se - it's pretty on the garden, so peaceful looking, and we certainly need the moisture. It's the danger and difficulty of walking the days after.)
(no subject)
21 January 2026 09:20 amdisneydream06*~*~*~*~*GREAT BIG HAPPY BIRTHDAY WISHES*~*~*~*~*
To my longest, not oldest, friend,
owlstorm_9 I hope you have a fantastic day. :)
The Rebel Alliance
21 January 2026 08:32 amlydamorehouse
Image: no laser eyes this time, but this is a loon in the shape of the Rebel Alliance symbol from Star Wars.
So, let's see. Yesterday started out a little rough for me in part because I was feeling EXTRA anxious because helicopters were buzzing our neighborhood. So much information getting shared is people guessing at what's going on and people who seem to maybe be reporting on what's happening? But, it's often unclear where they are getting their information? So, it's very paranoid here.
What I heard was that ICE was back at the MidwayTarget just up the block from me, specifically targeting the protestors there. Target has been a target for resistance efforts because of the video that was widely circulated of Greg Bovino, the ICE commandant/literal SS officer cosplayer, stopping to take a piss flanked by his goons. Rumors have also circulated that Target is not what we are calling a "Fourth Amendment business." (For our international friends, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the US states that there must be probable/reasonable cause for search and seizure--including of our persons, our bodies--basically no one has the right to just snatch people out of homes or businesses.) So, here in the Twin Cities, if a business appears to cooperate with ICE, even to the point of not protecting their employees, people have been mad. And supposedly Target was compliant with ICE. So,the day before yesterday there was a big sit-in in Target. Yesterday, there was a group of people doing retail resistance? They would buy salt (or other metaphorically appropriate things) and then immediately return it, so that Target would have the hassle of all this merchandise to deal with and refunds to issue.
There was another rumor that ICE was at HarMar Mall in Roseville, which is literally a shopping mall? But, as someone who has taken the bus out in that direction, a lot of folks who might be targets of the gestapo do work in those retail stores.
What I should have done when the helicopters were circling was just get in my car and drive up to Target and see what I could see or head out to HarMar, but I was waiting for Mason to be up to find out what he wanted to do for lunch and whether or not he was going to his uncle Keven's to do some odd job work. Mason was justifiably cranky with me when he came down to find me in a state. As he pointed out, I can just go. He is an adult. Not only can he make himself lunch, he can figure out how to get to Keven's if need be.
But, having talked that through, Mason and I decided to drop by the folks I lovingly call the Food Communists and see if there was work to be done. Sure enough! We arrived in time to help load up one car that was delivering diapers. We packed several bags of groceries, helped load more stuff to go, and then spent the "downtime" making individual packs of various bulk food items, while chatting with neighbors--and one guy who and I am not kidding, came from the Gunflint Trail in Northern Minnesota order to help with the resistance. That is 288 miles from us, about a 5 hour drive (if you drive without stopping.) People in the UK? He basically came from another world. (And honestly? A few more miles and he would have been coming from Canada.)
Speaking of my non-Minnesotan and foreign friends, here's
naomikritzer 's write up of things to do for us if you are interested in helping the resistance: https://naomikritzer.com/2026/01/21/how-to-help-if-you-are-outside-minnesota/ Even if all you want is some links to reliable, detailed information about what is actually happening here, this is a good resource to start with!My singing group was supposed to gather last night at 7:30 pm and I made an effort to join them, but I think I screwed up the where or the when because I wandered around in the place I thought they'd be and no one was around. To be fair to me (and them) it was supposed to be outside a church and there are a number of churches with similar names in the neighborhood and I suspect I just ended up at the wrong one. They sing every day, so I'll get other chances to join them.
I've been trying to also focus on feeding myself and my family, so yesterday I made a lovely mapo tofu for lunch and then we had bibbimap for dinner. Two rice meals, but both hearty, filling, and sustaining. I went this morning to get my blood drawn for all the various health checks, so I am remembering to take care of myself and my family. I've been joking that all of this stress has actually made me better about remembering to hydrate, so that's something.
And, with luck, I'll be running D&D this weekend. So, we can keep up our mental health!
Okay, everyone, stay strong!
(no subject)
21 January 2026 10:03 amwatersword posting in thisfinecrewDemocrats Successfully Strip All Anti-Trans Riders From Final Appropriations Bills.
Now would be a great time to tell your Democratic representatives that you saw the party protecting trans people, and that you approve and want them to keep doing that. If your reps are Republicans, I guess tell them to stop putting discriminatory clauses in the budget?
WWW Wednesday
21 January 2026 09:50 amduckprintspressI had a really busy weekend (vending 4 days, Friday to Monday, in a city 3+ hrs drive away) so my reading was relatively sparse, especially on graphic novels/manga.
1. What are you currently reading?
- The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin: so far I'm a little iffier on this one than on the first, but I'm still enjoying it.
- 盗墓笔记 vol. 2 by 南派三叔: ugggh I hardly made any progress at all, sigh.
2. What have you recently finished reading?
- The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin: a lovely book that had, for me, a couple wrong notes that dimmed it a little. Specifically: 1. did not hate Robert Moses enough and 2. no Jewish or East Asian city avatars. It feels a bit of a slap in the face for the importance of those groups in the fabric of the city. I've decided that, lacking canon to the contrary, Brooklyn is Jewish because I Said So. (I am a native New Yorker and have lived in Manhattan - 18 years total - and the Bronx - 5 years total - so that influences my views a lot.)
- Fragtime omnibus by Sato: modern GL with sort of super powers. I'd have liked it better if the characters hadn't been so... how they are.
- Kase-san and Yamada vol. 3 by Hiromi Takashima: more jealousy stuff. what a drag.
- That Times I Got Reincarnated as a Slime vol. 6 by Fuse
- How Do We Relationship? vol. 1 by Tamifull: modern GL. I appreciate the bit at the beginning making clear that whatever bumps they hit, that's where they end up, cause it made Teh Dramz feel lower stakes.
3. What will you read next?
Novels: my reading club is starting Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell, and my Libby hold on Apothecary Diaries vol. 2 by Natsu Hyuuga came through, so. those.
Physical Graphic Novels: I don't expect to read any this week.
Libby Graphic Novels: My Libby isn't loading right now, somethings wrong with it, but I know my loan of Just Like Mona Lisa vol. 1 by Tsumuji Yoshimura is due within the next couple days, so definitely that. I can't remember what else off hand. I've got around 10 loans rn tho... wait, there it goes, finally! Okay, that's the only one due imminently. I got a copy of Cherry Magic vol. 15 through yesterday so I expect to be on that basically immediately, too. The only reason I didn't read it yesterday was I ran out of time.
Pluralistic: Google's AI pricing plan (21 Jan 2026)
21 January 2026 02:32 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
doctorow_feed
Today's links
- Google's AI pricing plan: From each according to their ability (to pay).
- Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
- Object permanence: Disney buys Pixar; Bruces on "vernacular video"; Hickey paralysis; RIP David Hartwell; Personalized pricing; They were warned.
- Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
- Recent appearances: Where I've been.
- Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Colophon: All the rest.
Google's AI pricing plan (permalink)
Google is spending a lot on AI, but what's not clear is how Google will make a lot from AI. Or, you know, even break even. Given, you know, that businesses are seeing zero return from AI:
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/20/pwc_ai_ceo_survey/
But maybe they've figured it out. In a recent edition of his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller pulls on several of the strings that Google's top execs have dangled recently:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/will-google-organize-the-worlds-prices
The first string: Google's going to spy on you a lot more, for the same reason Microsoft is spying on all of its users: because they want to supply their AI "agents" with your personal data:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ANECpNdt-4
Google's announced that it's going to feed its AI your Gmail messages, as well as the whole deep surveillance dossier the company has assembled based on your use of all the company's products: Youtube, Maps, Photos, and, of course, Search:
https://twitter.com/Google/status/2011473059547390106
The second piece of news is that Apple has partnered with Google to supply Gemini to all iPhone users:
https://twitter.com/NewsFromGoogle/status/2010760810751017017
Apple already charges Google more than $20b/year not to enter the search market; now they're going to be charging Google billions to stay out of the AI market, too. Meanwhile, Google will get to spy on Apple customers, just like they spy on their own users. Anyone who says that Apple is ideologically committed to your privacy because they're real capitalists is a sucker (or a cultist):
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones
But the big revelation is how Google is going to make money with AI: they're going to sell AI-based "personalized pricing" to "partners," including "Walmart, Visa, Mastercard, Shopify, Gap, Kroger, Macy’s, Stripe, Home Depot, Lowe's, American Express, etc":
https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/agentic-commerce-ai-tools-protocol-retailers-platforms/
Personalized pricing, of course, is the polite euphemism for surveillance pricing, which is when a company spies on you in order to figure out how much they can get away with charging you (or how little they can get away with paying you):
https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/#
It's a weird form of cod-Marxism, whose tenet is "From each according to their desperation; to each according to their vulnerability." Surveillance pricing advocates say that this is "efficient" because they can use surveillance data to offer you discounts, too – like, say you rock up to an airline ticket counter 45 minutes before takeoff and they can use surveillance data to know that you won't take their last empty seat for $200, but you would fly in it for $100, you could get that seat for cheap.
This is, of course, nonsense. Airlines don't sell off cheap seats like bakeries discounting their day-olds – they jack up the price of a last-minute journey to farcical heights.
Google also claims that it will only use its surveillance pricing facility to offer discounts, and not to extract premiums. As Stoller points out, there's a well-developed playbook for making premiums look like discounts, which is easy to see in the health industry. As Stoller says, the list price for an MRI is $8,000, but your insurer gets a $6000 "discount" and actually pays $1970, sticking you with a $30 co-pay. The $8000 is a fake number, and so is the $6000 – the only real price is the $30 you're paying.
The whole economy is filled with versions of this transparent ruse, from "department stores who routinely mark everything as 80% off" to pharmacy benefit managers:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen
Google, meanwhile, is touting its new "universal commerce protocol" (UCP), a way for AI "agents" to retrieve prices and product descriptions and make purchases:
Right now, a major hurdle to "agentic AI" is the complexity of navigating websites designed for humans. AI agents just aren't very reliable when it comes to figuring out which product is which, choosing the correct options, and putting it in a shopping cart, and then paying for it.
Some of that is merely because websites have inconsistent "semantics" – literally things like the "buy" button being called something other than "buy button" in the HTML code. But there's a far more profound problem with agentic shopping, which is that companies deliberately obfuscate their prices.
This is how junk fees work, and why they're so destructive. Say you're a hotel providing your rate-card to an online travel website. You know that travelers are going to search for hotels by city and amenities, and then sort the resulting list by price. If you hide your final price – by surprising the user with a bunch of junk fees at checkout, or, better yet, after they arrive and put their credit-card down at reception – you are going to be at the top of that list. Your hotel will seem like the cheapest, best option.
But of course, it's not. From Ticketmaster to car rentals, hotels to discount airlines, rental apartments to cellular plans, the real price is withheld until the very last instant, whereupon it shoots up to levels that are absolutely uncompetitive. But because these companies are able to engage in deceptive advertising, they look cheaper.
And of course, crooked offers drive out honest ones. The honest hotel that provides a true rate card, reflecting the all-in price, ends up at the bottom of the price-sorted list, rents no rooms, and goes out of business (or pivots to lying about its prices, too).
Online sellers do not want to expose their true prices to comparison shopping services. They benefit from lying to those services. For decades, technologists have dreamed of building a "semantic web" in which everyone exposes true and accurate machine-readable manifests of their content to facilitate indexing, search and data-mining:
https://people.well.com/user/doctorow/metacrap.htm
This has failed. It's failed because lying is often more profitable than telling the truth, and because lying to computers is easier than lying to people, and because once a market is dominated by liars, everyone has to lie, or be pushed out of the market.
Of course, it would be really cool if everyone diligently marked up everything they put into the public sphere with accurate metadata. But there are lots of really cool things you could do if you could get everyone else to change how they do things and arrange their affairs to your convenience. Imagine how great it would be if you could just get everyone to board an airplane from back to front, or to stand right and walk left on escalators, or to put on headphones when using their phones in public.
Wanting it badly is not enough. People have lots of reasons for doing things in suboptimal ways. Often the reason is that it's suboptimal for you, but just peachy for them.
Google says that it's going to get every website in the world to expose accurate rate cards to its chatbots to facilitate agentic AI. Google is also incapable of preventing "search engine optimization" companies from tricking it into showing bullshit at the top of the results for common queries:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse
Google somehow thinks that the companies that spend millions of dollars trying to trick its crawler won't also spend millions of dollars trying to trick its chatbot – and they're providing the internet with a tool to inject lies straight into the chatbot's input hopper.
But UCP isn't just a way for companies to tell Google what their prices are. As Stoller points out, UCP will also sell merchants the ability to have Gemini set prices on their products, using Google's surveillance data, through "dynamic pricing" (another euphemism for "surveillance pricing").
This decade has seen the rise and rise of price "clearinghouses" – companies that offer price "consulting" to direct competitors in a market. Nominally, this is just a case of two competitors shopping with the same supplier – like Procter and Gamble and Unilever buying their high-fructose corn-syrup from the same company.
But it's actually far more sinister. "Clearinghouses" like Realpage – a company that "advises" landlords on rental rates – allow all the major competitors in a market to collude to raise prices in lockstep. A Realpage landlord that ignores the service's "advice" and gives a tenant a break on the rent will be excluded from Realpage's service. The rental markets that Realpage dominates have seen major increases in rental rates:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/09/pricewars/#adam-smith-communist
Google's "direct pricing" offering will allow all comers to have Google set their prices for them, based on Google's surveillance data. That includes direct competitors. As Stoller points out, both Nike and Reebok are Google advertisers. If they let Google price their sneakers, Google can raise prices across the market in lockstep.
Despite how much everyone hates this garbage, neoclassical economists and their apologists in the legal profession continue to insist that surveillance pricing is "efficient." Stoller points to a law review article called "Antitrust After the Coming Wave," written by antitrust law prof and Google lawyer Daniel Crane:
https://nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-99-number-4/antitrust-after-the-coming-wave/
Crane argues that AI will kill antitrust law because AI favors monopolies, and argues "that we should forget about promoting competition or costs, and instead enact a new Soviet-style regime, one in which the government would merely direct a monopolist’s 'AI to maximize social welfare and allocate the surplus created among different stakeholders of the firm.'"
This is a planned economy, but it's one in which the planning is done by monopolists who are – somehow, implausibly – so biddable that governments can delegate the power to decide what we can buy and sell, what we can afford and who can afford it, and rein them in if they get it wrong.
In 1890, Senator John Sherman was stumping for the Sherman Act, America's first antitrust law. On the Senate floor, he declared:
If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life. If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity.
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/
Google thinks that it has finally found a profitable use for AI. It thinks that it will be the first company to make money on AI, by harnessing that AI to a market-rigging, price-gouging monopoly that turns Google's software into Sherman's "autocrat of trade."
It's funny when you think of all those "AI safety" bros who claimed that AI's greatest danger was that it would become sentient and devour us. It turns out that the real "AI safety" risk is that AI will automate price gouging at scale, allowing Google to crown itself a "King over the necessaries of life":
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space
(Image: Noah_Loverbear; CC BY-SA 3.0; Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; modified)
Hey look at this (permalink)
- The Line, a Saudi Megaproject, Is Dead
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/the-line-neom-saudi-vision-2030/ -
Mark Carney's full speech at the World Economic Forum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btqHDhO4h10 -
A Grassroots Victory in the Golden Age of Bullies https://asupposedlylonething.net/blog/2026/grassroots-victory-golden-age-bullies/
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AI may be everywhere, but it's nowhere in recent productivity statistics https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/15/forrester_ai_jobs_impact/
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The Long Now of the Web: Inside the Internet Archive’s Fight Against Forgetting https://hackernoon.com/the-long-now-of-the-web-inside-the-internet-archives-fight-against-forgetting
Object permanence (permalink)
#20yrsago Disney swaps stock for Pixar; Jobs is largest Disney stockholder https://web.archive.org/web/20060129105430/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/01/22/cnpixar22.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2006/01/22/ixcitytop.html
#20yrsago HOWTO anonymize your search history https://web.archive.org/web/20060220004353/https://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,70051-0.html
#15yrsago Bruce Sterling talk on “vernacular video” https://vimeo.com/18977827
#15yrsago Elaborate televised prank on Belgium’s terrible phone company https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxXlDyTD7wo
#15yrsago Portugal: 10 years of decriminalized drugs https://web.archive.org/web/20110120040831/http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/01/16/drug_experiment/?page=full
#15yrsago Woman paralyzed by hickey https://web.archive.org/web/20110123072349/https://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/01/21/new-zealand-woman-partially-paralyzed-hickey/
#15yrsago EFF warns: mobile OS vendors aren’t serious about security https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/dont-sacrifice-security-mobile-devices
#10yrsago Trumpscript: a programming language based on the rhetorical tactics of Donald Trump https://www.inverse.com/article/10448-coders-assimilate-donald-trump-to-a-programming-language
#10yrsago That time the DoD paid Duke U $335K to investigate ESP in dogs. Yes, dogs. https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/jan/21/duke-universitys-deep-dive-uncanny-abilities-canin/
#10yrsago Kathryn Cramer remembers her late husband, David Hartwell, a giant of science fiction https://web.archive.org/web/20160124050729/http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/2016/01/til-death-did-us-part.html
#10yrsago What the Democratic Party did to alienate poor white Americans https://web.archive.org/web/20160123041632/https://www.alternet.org/economy/robert-reich-why-white-working-class-abandoned-democratic-party
#10yrsago Bernie Sanders/Johnny Cash tee https://web.archive.org/web/20160126070314/https://weardinner.com/products/bernie-cash
#5yrsago NYPD can't stop choking Black men https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/21/i-cant-breathe/#chokeholds
#5yrsago Rolling back the Trump rollback https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/21/i-cant-breathe/#cra
#1yrsago Winning coalitions aren't always governing coalitions https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/06/how-the-sausage-gets-made/#governing-is-harder
#1yrago The Brave Little Toaster https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/08/sirius-cybernetics-corporation/#chatterbox
#1yrago The cod-Marxism of personalized pricing https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/11/socialism-for-the-wealthy/#rugged-individualism-for-the-poor
#1yrago They were warned https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/13/wanting-it-badly/#is-not-enough
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
- Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937 -
Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25
https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/ -
Ottawa: Enshittification at Perfect Books, Jan 28
https://www.instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/ -
Toronto: Enshittification and the Age of Extraction with Tim Wu, Jan 30
https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/ -
Salt Lake City: Enshittification at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Tanner Humanities Center), Feb 18
https://tanner.utah.edu/center-events/cory-doctorow/ -
Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5
https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/ -
Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow -
Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html -
Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2
Recent appearances (permalink)
- Why Big Tech is a Trap for Independent Creators (Stripper News)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmYDyz8AMZ0 -
Enshittification (Creative Nonfiction podcast)
https://brendanomeara.com/episode-507-enshittification-author-cory-doctorow-believes-in-a-new-good-internet/ -
A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet (39c3)
https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet -
Enshittification with Plutopia
https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/ -
"can't make Big Tech better; make them less powerful" (Get Subversive)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1EzM9_6eLE
Latest books (permalink)
- "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025
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"Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/ -
"Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
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"The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
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"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
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"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
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"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
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"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
Upcoming books (permalink)
- "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026
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"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
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"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026
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"The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources:
Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1010 words today, 11362 total)
- "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.
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"The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
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A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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