Network [Toby Atkin-Wright]

That sure has been a year. Further retrospective to come, I suppose.

What are you reading now?

The Hobbit, nth reread. Over at LG&M Abigail Nussbaum is blogging a reread of Lord of the Rings, and that's inspired me to pick them up again. I've a nice anniversary edition of Hobbit with JRRT's illustrations to read, and Pop Shackelford's late-seventies hardbacks of the trilogy. Unsure what I'll do for a Silmarillion but that is a next-week problem at the earliest.

Usually I'm a little annoyed by The Hobbit: it's tonally dissonant from LotR, more of a bedtime story than Serious Fiction. This time through I'm finding it an absolute delight. It's very clearly written to be read aloud, and the prose is just musical. I am also hearing the voices of John 'Gandalf' Huston and Orson 'Bilbo' Bean in my head as I read. Presumably this will extend to Richard 'Smaug' Boone as well once I get that far.

What did you just finish reading?

A.K. Larkwood's The Unspoken Name / The Thousand Eyes duology, which came highly recommended ages ago. Sigh. I wanted to like these, and did like the first third of the first book. Csorwe is an Orc girl who's due to be sacrificed to her god, the Unspoken Name; instead she gets kidnapped by someone who is quite probably the book's evil sorcerer and becomes quite a competent right hand for him. I quite enjoyed Csorwe's point-of-view and voice. I liked it less when she was forced to work with a particular obnoxious character who she had good reason to hate, even less when we started getting his viewpoint and were clearly intended to sympathise with him, and much less than that when her viewpoint disappears entirely a quarter through the second book.

These are doing very neat things with gods and immortality. I wish I'd been less annoyed and more able to appreciate those neat things. If you can get past Talasseres being insufferable, and don't mind character-stretching wisecracking, I'd recommend them.

Before that, R.F. Kuang's Katabasis, best summed up by her: "I started off writing this like ha ha, academia is hell, and then it was oh no, academia IS Hell." Cambridge graduate student in magic descends to the Underworld to retrieve her advisor, who she thinks she killed; she's accompanied by a golden-boy grad student for (it turns out) similar reasons. This sneaks in under the wire as my favourite read of the year. It opens with a passage complaining about inaccuracies in depictions of the journey to the underworld:

Dante's account was so distracted with spiteful potshots that the reportage got lost within. T.S. Eliot had supplied some of the more recent and detailed landscape descriptions on record, but The Waste Land was so self-referential that its status as a sojourner's account was under serious dispute. Orpheus's notes, already in archaic Greek, were largely in shreds like the rest of him. And Aeneas-- well, that was all Roman propaganda.

I love this, but then I would. It's great. I am deeply annoyed that the publisher (and the author's agent) refuse to even talk to Subterranean about doing a fancy edition.

What do you think you'll read next?

LotR, naturellement. After that, anyone's guess. Lord knows there's plenty on the shelf to pick from.

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Я вижу (здесь, у русскоязычных американцев) какую-то примитивную поляризацию. Или ты "за Трампа", тогда "всех иммигрантов выставить, кроме меня, любимого", Трамп порядок наведёт; а те, кто против - они за то, чтобы нами правили хромые чёрные лесбиянки.

Тут, конечно, может возникнуть вопрос - а что, по-вашему, приличный человек не считает хромых, или чёрных, или лесбиянок за людей? Похоже, что им это нормально.

Или ты "за Камалу", и тогда весь трамповский электорат - жирные идиоты с ружьями, жрут бигмаки, ездят на грузовиках, и все расисты и моральные уроды.

Ну, положим, для меня и Трамп говнюк, и Камала сучка, да и Бутигиг - ебанутый придурок и клоун, и... перечислите кандидатов, я найду им эпитет. Не, серьёзно, по-моему, последним приличным президентом был Рейган. Но это личное мнение.

Я что хочу сказать - я не люблю никакую партию. Никакую. Окей? Ни колебаться вместе с линией, ни голосовать вместе с партией меня совершенно не тянет. Иногда у меня вообще нет мнения, особенно если нет информации.

Ну короче, извините; это я в связи с новоприбывшими, чтоб не питали иллюзий насчёт человека, у которого мнение неправильное. Ну предположим, и чо?

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It's almost January. Well, it's already January in Oz, but they cheat. Late for solstice, early for New Year's. Drop bears. Drop bears are conspiring with the venomous snakes and goannas to mess with the calendar.

This year I ended up making five (as in 5!) different calendar selections with next to no overlap in which pictures got picked. That's because I could and because people not only expected/requested calendars, some requested _themed_ calendars. So I ended up getting printed: 6 calendars of animals from work (regular pictures), 6 calendars of animals at work with "enrichment" stuff, one calendar of animals in the Asia section, one "Zodiac" calendar, and two My Little Pony fanart calendars.

I made the enrichment pictures calendar because I like to push enrichment and remind people of the oddball things I'd do. Like collecting autumn leaves to give out in the winter, filling empty ostrich egg shells with scents or treats, or leaving a big jug of water for the cats to knock over. All the enrichment-themed calendars, three of the regular critter calendars and the one Asia subset calendar were for people at work.

My mother asked for a Chinese zodiac themed calendar. That took a bit more digging. I had to substitute a mouse for the rat, a muskox for the ox and a Komodo dragon for the dragon. Several of the pictures were ones I'd taken on trips. I doubt the ancient Chinese had African wild hunting dogs, red river hogs and Himalayan tahr in mind when they worked out the signs, but this is a calendar, I have a limited library to draw from and I am an artiste!

I'd had one print made of the Pony calendar, but I showed it to someone at work and she wanted it for her son. So I went back to the photo store and had them print another for me.

Since the printed image comes out much darker than the original digital image, I made them all much brighter before submitting them to the printing process. I think it worked.

Danny dropped by the other week with six fresh bales of hay, enough to feed the llama well into summer. While Danny and I were unloading the bales of hay from his trailer and lugging them to the Llama shelter, I talked his ear off about quitting my job. He said he knew some people, he could try and hook me up with a place keeping birds of prey. Uh, no? I spent 35 years preparing in case I got fired and I finally gave up and quit. I'm not keen to jump back into the frying pan. Meanwhile, most of my pants are getting tighter.

At a somewhat annual supper held by a friend I've known since high school (the food was excellent, it is always excellent), another high school friend suggested that we see ourselves in our children and pets. I do not. Instead I see a continuum of shared traits across all species. I see playfulness and affection in white tail deer. Bumblebees learn through observation. We did not invent those behaviors. Domestication is an evolutionary response that selects for juvenile characteristics, shaped by the stress of living with or near us. We do not domesticate, animals domesticate themselves to survive. We are murder apes with delusions of grandeur. I fully expect all living things to be convinced of their own supreme worthiness. Ergo, every little quirk, every little transgressive social/antisocial act laid bare to the scorn of the righteous, every last thing that people do and keep doing generation after generation, are part of nature and of our nature. Nothing matters beyond evolution and looking good. Nature plays dice and all bets are on the table, all the time. This is the spectacle, the beauty and the glory, the tapestry of life. This is why I live in the country, where the wild things are, even though all the notable Pleistocene animals are extinct, killed and eaten by us, never to return.

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Watch on YouTube

Link in case the song does not work.

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Welcome to New Year's Day 2026! 2025 has set a very low bar, but even so I don't have a whole lot of hope for improvement. Good luck, all. We'll need it.

location: Schildhaven in Den Haag

Music:: 24-hour filksing

Mood::

calm

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My mother died in March. That feels like basically the only thing that happened this year, but of course it's not. Theoretically you stay in full mourning for a parent for a whole year (which hasn't ended yet); I haven't quite managed that, as done properly it's really quite intense, no social gatherings or live music for example, but it has definitely been the major theme in my life. And helping Dad to figure out what his life will be like as a widow.

I continued to be a student rabbi, making it through to the halfway point of my studies. I took on more and more complex rabbinic work, and got to know the incoming first year students. (We're the grownups now, there is actually only one finalist ahead of my cohort.) My much awaited and also somewhat dreaded trip to Israel got cancelled, due to the decision point coinciding with the particularly scary time when Israel was actively at war with Iran. I did some other short travel, even making it to Germany and Sweden.

Significant events:

Mum went from being officially terminally ill but mostly coping at the beginning of the year, to the drugs not working and being in a lot of pain in January-February, to actively dying. March-April was all the immediate aftermath of her death.
I had a few days with jack in Skegness, which I remember basically nothing about because it was in the middle of the final weeks of Mum's life. I think we stayed in a cute tiny house and did a bit of walking in the countryside. I have more memories of our trip to Norfolk in May.
I spent a very intense and overwhelming week in Germany at an Abrahamic faith retreat.
doseybat and verazea got married on a lightship on the Thames, and my partners had a Jewish blessing of their 20-year-old marriage, both on the same weekend.
I did a completely absurd amount of travelling for the High Holy Days, first day Rosh HaShanah in Southampton, second day in the Isle of Wight accompanied by the intrepid cjwatson, Shabbat Shuva in Stoke, Yom Kippur in Cornwall where I had to respond to the first fatal antisemitic attack in this country in my lifetime, Succot back home in Cambridge, a very flying visit to Sweden for the Shabbat during Succot with ghoti_mhic_uait, and back for Simchat Torah and returning to college.

( other wrap-ups )

Previous versions: [2004] [2005] [2006] [2007] [2008] [2009] [2010] [2011] [2012] [2013] [2014] [2017] [2018] [2019] [2020] [2021] [2022] [2023][2024] Amazingly this is my 19th review of the year; I've been going since 2004 but there were a couple of years in the middle I missed out.

Music:: Nine Inch Nails (feat Judeline): Who wants to live forever

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Posted by John Kovalic

https://www.dorktower.com/2025/12/29/19858/

https://dorktower.kovalic.com/?p=19858

HEY! Want to help keep DORK TOWER going? Then consider joining the DORK TOWER Patreon and ENLIST IN THE ARMY OF DORKNESS TODAY! (We have COOKIES!) (And SWAG!) (And GRATITUDE!)

https://www.dorktower.com/2025/12/29/19858/

https://dorktower.kovalic.com/?p=19858

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Reading: Still the Doctor Who Reader, but supplementing with various Yuletide recs, and what I assume are Primeval Denial secret santa offerings. So far Dog Hamlets (Lord Peter Wimsey casefic. I had to think a bit to understand what the evidence was showing, but understood in the end - I think) and On Solstice Night (a spooky folklore take on the the "stuck in a bothy" trope, for a Primeval character and, because this is Primeval fandom, a shared OC).

Listening: Having exhausted all the podfic advent calendars, I'm listing to the Missing Episodes Podcast which I'd been hearing people mention for years but never really picked up. It is well done and if I catch up with them, I'll be interested in their take on the current nebulous swirling rumours.

Watching: When Marmalade Sparrow is here we end up watching a lot of Taskmaster, which she introduced us to. I think we're currently somewhere around 2018.

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1. Your main fandom of the year?

Still 18th Century history, Prussian-Austrian-Hannoverian-French edition, with the occasional ancient history interlude. Though ancient history might take over as the primary runner next year!

2. Your favorite film watched this year?

It's a race between a surprise "came for one character, remained for all of them" movie, none other than Thunderbolts*, and the superb thriller September 5, which manages among other things to do something Steven Spielberg tried to in one of his movies and does it better.

3. Your favorite book read this year?

This year I am truly spoiled for choices. I both read some books that have been around for a while as well as very recently published ones, and for the most part, enjoyed or even loved most of them. I think it's a race between Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik and Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh.

4. Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?

For complicated real life reasons:

Watch on YouTube

5. Your favorite TV show of the year?

While tv had some let downs for me this year - *cough* Strange New Worlds *cough* - it also had some great new discoveries and some lovely continuing faves. I feel I can't answer this question fairly unless I firstly differentiate between "favourite miniseries" and "favourite continuing show", and in the second department "favourite new-to-me- show" and "favourite returning favourite". So: Favourite miniseries - there were several excellent ones, but really, for "took my breath away with each episode and performance, and format, tells a concluded story and THANK GOD DOES NOT APPEAR TO GET AN UNNESSARY SEQUEL": Adolescence . Favourite continuing series familiar to me - look, Andor had a superb conclusion and I really appreciate the scriptwriters on social media doubling down on just who the Evil Empire is in rl these days, but it's not Andor for the simple reason that while I was not upset about the writing for Bix as I've seen other people be, it really wasn't up to the rest of the show's standards. And it's not Wheel of Time, either, even though I went from like to love in this season and still feel like shaking my hand at the injustice of fate because of the cancellation. So: It's Foundation all the way. I loved the third season and will happily say more about why on the January Meme.
Favourite new to me show: Pluribus, aka Vince Gilligan did it again.

6. Your favorite online community of the year?

Still

rheinsberg.

7. Your best new fandom discovery of the year?

The play Born with Teeth by Liz Duffy Adams, which I saw in London in August: really intense and clever on stage Shakespeare/Marlow slash fiction, with Ncuti Gatwa and Edward Bluemel superb in the roles; delightful in itself, but also, I now have a new playwright to keep an eye on!

8. Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?

Strange New Worlds, season 3. Alas.

9. Your fandom boyfriend of the year?

I would never compete with Lois Lane, but this year's Superman is an incredibly endearing version of Clark Kent, and arrived just at the right time.

10. Your fandom girlfriend of the year?

Demerzel from Foundation, and I got two great stories starring her as Yuletide gifts. Runner up: Kleya from Andor, and Juliette Binoche in what just may the definite Penelope performance in The Return .

11. Your biggest squee moment of the year?

( Spoiler for Wake Up, Dead Man ensue: ) Runner-up: ( Spoiler for Demerzel's backstory in Foundation )

12. The most missed of your old fandoms?

I'm missing - and probably I'm employing rosy glasses here - the way media could be discussed without one part of the viewership crying "Woke!" and other crying "betrayal" if their ship of choice doesn't become canon. (Latest example: Stranger Things. Which btw I'm enjoying, but one look at fandom discussion and I ran.)

13. The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to?

I'm currently eyeing Severance.

14. Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year?

The Vampire Lestat, aka season 3 of Interview with the Vampire. Can't wait to find out what this particular creative team will do with both the present day rock star Lestat frame and the memoirs part, plus unless I'm mistaken it looks like they're already incorporating bits of The Queen of the Damned. And speaking of Anne Rice adaptations, I'm also very curious what Tom Ford will make of her historical (non-supernatural historical) novel Cry to Heaven, starring Nicolas Hoult.

location: Bad Wiessee

Mood::

calm

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(все побежали...)

- выперли, и я решил больше не работать;
- проплыл за лето 40 километров;
- опять посетили Париж (le XIVéme, очень понравился);
- съездили поперёк Шестигранника (так Францию называют) в Страсбург;
- пили шампанское в Шампани;
- таки прогресс с бытовым разговорным французским;
- приезжала в гости Сильвия, наша бывшая учительница керамики, и мы таскались в Мёртл Бич, гулять вдоль океана;
- приезжал в гости Фред, наш приятель из Калифорнии.

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In return for tutoring, half-dragon Ruri rewards her classmates with knowledge about the draconic world. Terrible, terrible knowledge.

RuriDragon, volume 7 by Masaoki Shindo

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Well, that's it for 2025. Trump hasn't killed us all (yet) and I got a lot of books read.

December 2025 and 2025 as a Whole in Review

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I'd be a lot happier to see the ass-end of 2025 if I wasn't pretty sure that 2026 is going to be worse -- for the US, anyway. Maybe not so much for me; I fled that country a year ago. But my kids are still stuck there.

( The details -- goals from last New Year's Day )

I make that 680/11 = 61%. Last year was 68%, so only a little worse. Considering how bad it could have been, I'll take it.

location: Schildhaven in Den Haag

Music:: the first half of the 24-hour NYE filksing

Mood:: inconclusive

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https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap251230.html

Yes, but can your comet tail do this?

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap251230.html

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Во-первых, мы все, матёрые дримовцы, горячо приветствуем новый поток иммигрантов из жж. Как оно там было-то? Ну да ладно, без приколов.

Я пишу дыбр каждый день. Дыбр у меня бывает трёх уровней доступа. Изредка просто "дыбр" - это когда он открыт для всех; белый дыбр - это для френдов; красный дыбр - это для очень небольшого круга людей, которых я (надеюсь) всех хорошо знаю.Ночью я несколько раз просыпался, и каждый раз оказывалось, что сахар дико высокий. Он вообще был дико высокий до вот буквально ужина сейчас, когда он стал образцовым 100. Валю на ту успокоительную таблетку, что я слопал несколько дней назад. Я больше всё. Только йога да тизан (ромашковый чай или что-нибудь такое эхинацейное).

А проснулся по-настоящему в девятом часу, и жена уже написала из Китая, что она уже спать. Ну вот. И будильник звенел, а вот.

Решил сегодня прошвырнуться на шопинг, т.к. салат кончился. Сначала в Aldi - но там ничего для меня не было. Странно. Потом рядом в Autozone, где купил новые дворники для приуса (тем, старым, уже лет пять); цены на них зверски выросли, спасибо нашему чучелу; да ещё они какие-то сложные стали. Когда-то я просто покупал wiper blades, по несколько баксов штука. А сейчас два дворника 60 баксов. И там крепёж разнообразный, для разных приусов разный. Ну да что ж.

Заскочил в Хоум Дипо, там по мелочи, надо было баночку краски да замок для Нарнии.

Заскочил в Лидл, купил там и салата, и хлеба, и апельсинового сока, и пару круассанов, и ещё черники.

Заскочил в Публикс, купил там "тизана", т.е. травяного чая разного, а также большой пакет кофе. Ещё спросил у мясников, есть ли у них баранина для щей. Есть. Ну вот сварю в следующем году, где-нибудь в среду.

Заскочил в Волмарт и сдал эти дворники, что по таблице должны были подходить к моему приусу, а не подходили.

Заскочил в Лоуз, сдал замок, который я купил, чтобы приделать к Нарнии.

И вот, в четвёртом часу я заявился домой, и стал себе греть еду. Померял сахар. Почти 300. Что это блин за такое вообще?!

Пошёл гулять, натаптывать свои 10500 шагов. Тут на меня сбоку гавкает Уинстон соседский. Он так приветствует. Пошёл его поприветствовать, тут вышла Катя, и мы долго рассуждали о всяком. Катя мне сказала, что у Кэри её Уокер умер от рака - ну так мне это Кэри позавчера уже сказала. Короче, у нас тут такой нейбохуд, что и собак все знают. Но я уже замёрз (да у нас сейчас зима настала, к вечеру), и попрощался и пошёл гулять; гулять приходилось быстро и энергично, потому что брр.

А дома на ужин зафигачил яичницу, чтоб без карбзов, потому что сахар так и стоял под 300. Ну и вот, и сахар пришёл в норму. Надо же. Будем продолжать борьбу.

Всё на сегодня. Слушаю у юзера grammar_glamour интервью с Верой, которая выросла в Лугандоне, но потом таки сбежала в Украину.

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Французское patinoire, каток, происходит от глагола patiner (кататься на коньках), которое происходит от слова patin (конёк, а также сандали на плоской подошве), которое происходит от латинского patina (тарелка, плоская сковородка), которое происходит от греческого παττοσ (то ли нижний, то ли плоский).

Испанское слово patin происходит от французского patin.

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My father-in-law has gone to stay with his daughter for the next 3 weeks. The flat feels very quiet & empty and I had a nap on the sofa. I don't know why it feels quiet - he's a gentle man who made an effort not to be a trouble to us, and spent much of his time sitting in his own room listening to radio 4. But it feels as if a weight has been lifted, as if I no longer have to be 'on' but can just relax. It's very strange and I'm wondering how I will sleep tonight.

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Gacked from

daily_illuminator_feed

An American artist is making fully functional plate mail for mice. So far no mouse has volunteered to try it on...

https://www.npr.org/2025/11/27/nx-s1-5622020/mouse-armor-artist-jeff-de-boer

The last time I used this title someone was making 3D printed hats for sea urchins, as substitutes for the sea shells they use to protect delicate areas of their bodies in the wild.

https://www.boredpanda.com/sea-urchins-tiny-hats/

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73 chapters of roleplaying tables to inspire every gamemaster.

Bundle of Holding: Dread Thingonomicon (From 2024)

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This is a repeat offer of The Dread Thingonomicon compendium from Raging Swan Press, a single volume containing "hundreds of system-neutral lists for every GM." It's a complete 476-page compilation of all the "20 Things" lists Raging Swan has published for seven years.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Thing2025

Last time this was offered I said "Not really my sort of thing for multiple reasons, but it looks usable if you like that sort of thing (or these sorts of things), and pricing works out around a cent and a half per page." I don't think any of this has changed much.

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Toby Atkin-Wright

into the dark

вкратце на тему политики

Calendars

Surely, the protagonist of this song has better things to do with their time?

"Rabbit rabbit rabbit!"

Year in review 2025

The Eliopoulos Elves IV – DORK TOWER 29.12.25

Reading, Listening, Watching

End of Fannish Year Meme: 2025

краткие итоги года

RuriDragon, volume 7 by Masaoki Shindo

December 2025 and 2025 as a Whole in Review

River: Done With 2025

(no subject)

дыбр

смешная этимология

(no subject)

Bizarre but true II

Bundle of Holding: Dread Thingonomicon (From 2024)

Another Repeat Bundle - Dread Thinganomnicon

Links

July

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4	5	6	7	8	9 1	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31