Unknown Worlds: Tales from Beyond edited by Stanley Schmidt
Jan. 8th, 2026 08:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicoll
Another foray into the lost worlds of Unknown.
Unknown Worlds: Tales from Beyond edited by Stanley Schmidt
james_davis_nicollAnother foray into the lost worlds of Unknown.
Unknown Worlds: Tales from Beyond edited by Stanley Schmidt
The Death of Robin Hood, The Testament of Ann Lee, They Will Kill You, Hamlet, Send Help
Jan. 8th, 2026 11:04 amtrailer_spotThe Death of Robin Hood HD720p 34MB
Action-adventure drama with a new take on an aging Robin Hood. Grappling with his past after a life of crime and murder,Wolverine Robin Hood (Hugh Jackman) finds himself gravely injured after a battle he thought would be his last. In the hands of a mysterious woman (Jodie Comer), he is offered a chance at salvation. Bill Skarsgård and Noah Jupe are also part of the cast. Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski (Pig, A Quiet Place: Day One).
Reminds me that I want to watch Robin and Marian.
The Testament of Ann Lee HD720p 26MB
Biographical, historical musical drama about Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), founder of the devotional sect known as the Shakers. She was the irrepressible leader, who preached gender and social equality and was revered by her followers. The movie captures the ecstasy and agony of her quest to build a utopia, featuring more than a dozen traditional Shaker hymns reimagined as rapturous movements. Thomasin Mckenzie, Lewis Pullman, Tim Blake Nelson, Christopher Abbott and Stacy Martin are also part of the cast. Directed by Mona Fastvold (The World to Come) and written by Fastvold and her partner Brady Corbet, the couple responsible for The Brutalist.
Musicals and religious sects are not among my favourite topics. But the movie certainly seems unique and received very favourable festival reviews, especially praising the performance of Seyfried. A featurette about the Music & Movement of the film. And an earlier teaser trailer: HD720p 20MB.
They Will Kill You HD720p 39MB
Redband trailer for this violent, comedic action movie in which a woman (Zazie Beetz) takes a job as a housekeeper in a NYC high-rise, unaware of the building's history of disappearances. She soon realizes the community is shrouded in mystery, causing her to survive the night at the Virgil, a demonic cult’s mysterious and twisted death-trap of a lair, before becoming their next offering. Myha’La, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham and Patricia Arquette are also part of the cast.
Looks a bit exhausting.
Hamlet HD1080p 29MB
A reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, set in the world of a British South Asian family in contemporary London. Hamlet (Riz Ahmed) returns to London for the funeral of his father, but he is shocked when his uncle, Claudius (Art Malik), announces that he’s marrying Hamlet’s just-widowed mother (Sheeba Chaddha). After seeing his father’s ghost, who says he was murdered by Claudius, Hamlet becomes consumed by rage and revenge. Joe Alwyn, Timothy Spall and Morfydd Clark are also part of the cast.
Festival reviews are a bit mixed. But it looks visually good, and Ahmed gives another memorable performance.
Send Help HD720p 26MB
Darkly comedic psychological thriller in which two colleagues (Rachel McAdams, Dylan O'Brien) who find themselves stranded on a deserted island after they are the only survivors of a plane crash. On the island, they must overcome past grievances and work together to survive, but ultimately, it becomes an unsettling and darkly humorous battle of wills and wits to make it out alive. Directed by Sam Raimi (Spider-Man, For Love of the Game, The Evil Dead).
Action-adventure drama with a new take on an aging Robin Hood. Grappling with his past after a life of crime and murder,
Reminds me that I want to watch Robin and Marian.
The Testament of Ann Lee HD720p 26MB
Biographical, historical musical drama about Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), founder of the devotional sect known as the Shakers. She was the irrepressible leader, who preached gender and social equality and was revered by her followers. The movie captures the ecstasy and agony of her quest to build a utopia, featuring more than a dozen traditional Shaker hymns reimagined as rapturous movements. Thomasin Mckenzie, Lewis Pullman, Tim Blake Nelson, Christopher Abbott and Stacy Martin are also part of the cast. Directed by Mona Fastvold (The World to Come) and written by Fastvold and her partner Brady Corbet, the couple responsible for The Brutalist.
Musicals and religious sects are not among my favourite topics. But the movie certainly seems unique and received very favourable festival reviews, especially praising the performance of Seyfried. A featurette about the Music & Movement of the film. And an earlier teaser trailer: HD720p 20MB.
They Will Kill You HD720p 39MB
Redband trailer for this violent, comedic action movie in which a woman (Zazie Beetz) takes a job as a housekeeper in a NYC high-rise, unaware of the building's history of disappearances. She soon realizes the community is shrouded in mystery, causing her to survive the night at the Virgil, a demonic cult’s mysterious and twisted death-trap of a lair, before becoming their next offering. Myha’La, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham and Patricia Arquette are also part of the cast.
Looks a bit exhausting.
Hamlet HD1080p 29MB
A reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, set in the world of a British South Asian family in contemporary London. Hamlet (Riz Ahmed) returns to London for the funeral of his father, but he is shocked when his uncle, Claudius (Art Malik), announces that he’s marrying Hamlet’s just-widowed mother (Sheeba Chaddha). After seeing his father’s ghost, who says he was murdered by Claudius, Hamlet becomes consumed by rage and revenge. Joe Alwyn, Timothy Spall and Morfydd Clark are also part of the cast.
Festival reviews are a bit mixed. But it looks visually good, and Ahmed gives another memorable performance.
Send Help HD720p 26MB
Darkly comedic psychological thriller in which two colleagues (Rachel McAdams, Dylan O'Brien) who find themselves stranded on a deserted island after they are the only survivors of a plane crash. On the island, they must overcome past grievances and work together to survive, but ultimately, it becomes an unsettling and darkly humorous battle of wills and wits to make it out alive. Directed by Sam Raimi (Spider-Man, For Love of the Game, The Evil Dead).
2026/004: The Wood at Midwinter — Susanna Clarke
Jan. 8th, 2026 09:34 amtamaranth2026/004: The Wood at Midwinter — Susanna Clarke
All woods join up with all other woods.
All are one wood.
And in that wood all times join up with all other times.
All is one moment. [loc. 140]
A short story, more beautifully calligraphed and illustrated in print (to judge by photos online) but still lovely on a Kindle. It's apparently set in the same world as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell*, but I didn't spot any overlap, and it certainly doesn't require familiarity with the earlier, much longer work.
Ysolde Scott has devised a cunning stratagem: she'll arrange visits, and let her sister Merowdis -- possibly a saint, possibly neurodivergent, possibly just antisocial -- alight en route and spend time in the woods, where she is happiest. ( Read more... )
fail2ban GC
Jan. 8th, 2026 08:30 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
jwz_blog_feedOver the years I've accumulated thousands of fail2ban regexps. It's a performance impact. Is there some way to figure out which ones have not been hit in a while, to remove?
Another loss for Sentinel fandom
Jan. 7th, 2026 11:25 pmstarwatcherAly / Alyjude / Alyburns / Alyjude_Sideburns (depending on the era, fandom, or platform) died just after Christmas. She was a bright light in Sentinel fandom, with 181 stories written and posted.* Her most recent was a short story for 2025's Secret Santa. I beta'd it for her, and she was so pleased to be writing again -- on her phone, no less! Her love for Jim and Blair was immense, and the relationship she depicted between them shone from the pages. They had their ups and downs, just as in the source material, and some of her stories were very angsty indeed, but she always, always gave them a happy ending. (Well, almost always. There are a couple that are bittersweet.) I remember she once said, "Jim and Blair sing to me," and it showed in her work.
She also wrote a bunch of Stargate SG-1, and a few Stargate Atlantis. Unfortunately, in those days, I was so focused on the Sentinel fandom that I didn't notice her Stargate stories. Shame on me! (Of course, it didn't help that they were in a different archive; I may not even have known about them until she posted them at AO3; I've slept since then, and memory is hazy. Thank goodness for a central archive.) But I've since read a few, and her deft story-telling shows in those stories, too -- Jack-and-Daniel snark for the win! If anyone knows a Stargate comm where this information would be appropriate, feel free to link to this post.
Unfortunately, Aly's health in recent years was not good, but she never complained. She'd text something like, "Tired. Just got out of the hospital. I'll write tomorrow," and that would be all she'd say about it. Magician tells us more on Aly's Facebook page. Where it says "# friends posted on Aly's profile," click "See x more." Magician's post is under the name "Queenie Nln."
I'm going to miss her so much. In recent years, knowing she was confined to her home with only her cat for company, I made it a habit to email her several times a month, with jokes and pictures and little video clips that I found elsewhere on the net. At least two or three times a day, I find myself thinking, "Oh, gotta save that for Aly." No more.
Rest in peace, Aly. I'll remember you, and miss you.
--
About that * next to her story-count. Several years ago, I was going through Aly's stories on AO3, making sure that I had copies of each of them saved to my computer. (Yes, I hoard stories; I've seen too much disappear from the net, and I want everything in my hot little hand.) I discovered that I had a bunch of saved Aly stories that never made it to AO3. Several years before the "several years ago," a number of Aly's friends helped post her stories from the several sites they had been on, to AO3. I was part of the project, and it was... kind of hectic, to be honest; so much work to transfer. There were so many of us, sharing out files so that each person didn't have to post too many stories, that some obviously fell through the cracks.
Aly and I discussed it. She herself admits that punctuation in her early stories was eclectic; she was writing with feverish inspiration on Web TV -- no way to save her work for "later," or to have someone beta it. Basically she posted "live," as each story was written. Now, she had only her phone for editing and uploading. Ugh! We agreed that I'd do a beta pass on the stories, format them for AO3, then upload them with what I thought was appropriate summary and tags. Later, when she felt up to it, she would go in and make any additions / notes / changes she wanted.
So, I made a collection -- Alyjude's Rediscovered Sentinel Stories, and gleefully jumped in. I got 33 posted... and then got distracted by "stuff." (My niece moved with my help, my sis had a big project with my help, etc, etc, etc.) And Aly didn't push, or nag; she knew I'd do it eventually. But now I look at the last posting date, and it's coming up on two years. Shame on me! I've been meaning to post the rest of them -- about 20 more -- maybe in time for her birthday, but now it's too late for her to see them.
<sigh> Aly was excited to have her "lost" stories at AO3, and I want them available to old and new Sentinel fans; they're part of our shared fandom history. So, in Aly's memory, I will get the rest of her stories up before the end of the year. My health is pretty good, but... we just never know, do we?
I hope she'll look down and be pleased to see folks still enjoying her stories.
new year, new insurance
Jan. 8th, 2026 12:53 amredbirdI gave Capsule my new insurance information, and then had them deliver a prescription.
I will need/use the inhaler, but this is also confirmation that yes, I (still) have prescription drug coverage.
Other than that, not a great day. Fingertips are improving, but I had a sudden nosebleed while sitting quietly on the couch an hour ago. *sigh*
I will need/use the inhaler, but this is also confirmation that yes, I (still) have prescription drug coverage.
Other than that, not a great day. Fingertips are improving, but I had a sudden nosebleed while sitting quietly on the couch an hour ago. *sigh*
New Poems
Jan. 7th, 2026 10:26 pmysabetwordsmithbeavertech has posted the January batch of sponsored poems. :D"So Many Words for Wood" on
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
first_nations_freaks"The Infinity of Acorns" on
scienceworld"Birds and Snow" on
the_magick_circle"A Piecemeal Apocalypse" on
thefreaksclub
Frick exhibit of Scandinavian art
Jan. 7th, 2026 11:08 pmcellioThis afternoon we saw a traveling exhibit at the Frick Art Museum, The Scandinavian Home. It's only there for a few more days; we kept meaning to go on a day with docent tours and logistics kept happening, but finally, success. (The remaining tours are this Friday and Saturday.)
The pieces are mostly drawn from one private collection of works from Scandinavia from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From the museum's description:
Exhibitions of Scandinavian art typically focus on either painting — often on the work of a single artist or theme such as landscape — or on artisanal design. The Scandinavian Home integrates folk, decorative, and fine art with “home” as a central metaphor, mirroring the tastes and convictions of the period’s collectors and creators.
There were a lot of paintings, many of them landscapes, many of them striking -- capturing the feel of hoarfrost or high-latitude twilights. The collection also included some furniture items, including this really nifty cabinet:
It's pretty shallow. I don't know its intended use:
From the description:
Lars Kinsarvik, Norwegian 1846-1925:
The complex design of this cabinet rewards close looking: trolls, animals, enigmatic faces, and fantastical details peer out from the interlaced patterns -- folkloric imagery that helped forge a national design identity in Norway at the turn of the 20th century. [...] A chronicler of Viking ornament and rural material culture, he incorporated historical motifs into his invented repertiore of trolls and other imaginary creatures.
The exhibit includes an ornate chair (obviously well-used) by the same artist. The docent told this story: the collectors found the chair, very beat up and covered in crud, at some sale or other, bought it, and stuck it in their basement. Later they started to clean it up and realized they had something special, but they didn't know anything more about its origins. The chair was, it turned out, one of a pair: somewhere in Europe (I forget the details) they happened to be at a museum, saw the other one, and said "we have one just like that at home!". So that's how they found out who the artist was. I didn't ask, but I assume they acquired the cabinet sometime after that.
You can see the exhibit any time the museum is open (through Sunday), and we wandered around on our own for a while before the scheduled tour. The guided tour is about an hour; it was informative and the docent was friendly and approachable. I appreciate having a guided overview of an exhibit before diving into the details and reading all the little cards one by one (which at most museums is physically taxing for me). After the tour we went back through the exhibit to take a closer look at things.
I said that reading the display cards is usually a challenge. The Frick Museum gets major kudos for always having printed booklets (at decently large font) for people to use. Each page includes the information from the card and a small photo of the item it's for. Sometimes I have to do some flipping through the book when starting a new "section", especially when there are many rooms that you can take different paths through or when there are displays in the middle of the room as well as along the walls. But it works pretty well and it's a huge accessibility win. I don't know how long it'll be there, but I later found the PDF for this exhbibit on their website (and I see that somebody has already saved it in the Wayback Machine).
The exhibit included a few tapestries and carpets. Most were displayed so you could see only one side, as usual, but they had one hanging in a room so that you could view both sides. This is a tapestry from 1906 of wool and linen; they did not include information about dyes. After only 120 years of, presumably, being hung in range of sunlight, compare:
Front:
Back:
snowflake day 3: a love letter to fandom
Jan. 7th, 2026 06:42 pmsixbeforelunch
Challenge #3: Write a love letter to fandom.
John Green says of going to home games for AFC Wimbledon, "I'm with 8,000 people whose love is oriented in the same direction as mine." That, to me, is fandom. It's a group of people who have oriented their love in a similar direction, whether that's toward a show or an actor or a band or a character or a hobby or something else entirely. (Honestly, love oriented in the same direction might be foundational to almost all human-built institutions, and the problem with some of them is that the object of their love doesn't inspire pro-social behavior, but that's outside the scope of this post.) It doesn't matter what the object of the love is so much as the way that all that love aimed at a similar place amplifies itself, like vector multiplication.
The funny thing is, the way I do fandom these days, It's almost less about the object of the fandom and more about the idea of fandom, the love and the passion it inspires. Which is not to say that I'm not in some fandoms. I'm very active in Star Trek fandom, and love hanging out with people who love it with me. It's always fun to find people who share some of my other current interests like Sherlock Holmes, Murder She Wrote, Superman, and Jane Austen, or to reminisce happily with people who remember the loves that I'm less active in but still remember fondly like X-Files and Stargate.
But there are definitely people in fandom spaces with whom I share no fandoms, and I still enjoy their company, because they're doing the fandom thing too. That is, they're passionate about something, and so passionate that they want to talk about the thing, and make more of the thing, and put their joy and passion into the world so that other people can share it. Elsewhere on this year's snowflake, someone mentioned how much they love seeing someone be passionate about something, even if they don't share that passion. I like that. It is a joy to see humans be happy and excited about things they love, and to be unabashedly passionate about them.
Let people enjoy things has become a meme, almost a cliche, but that's because it so often needs to be said. Fandom at its best is a safe place where people are allowed to enjoy things without mockery or disdain, and in a world where that is all too often not the case, that's a very valuable thing.
Shopping
Jan. 7th, 2026 05:14 pmysabetwordsmithbrickhousewench tipped me to Heading Prints, a company that makes scarves using book art as inspiration. They offer bandanas, skinny scarves, large rectangular scarves, square silky scarves, and also a few rings with designs to match some of their most popular scarf designs. Also, these are much more affordable on average than most fashion scarves I've seen, although they do cost more than the cheap random ones in a discount store.If you've seen my post "How to Simplify Fashion," then consider these scarves as an option for color-matching. Look for a scarf whose colors you love and want to use. Wear it while clothes shopping to test if new clothes match your colors.
Bundle of Holding: The Painted Wastelands
Jan. 7th, 2026 05:26 pmjames_davis_nicoll
This all-new Painted Wastelands Bundle tours The Painted Wastelands, a prismatic pastel realm from Agamemnon Press for use with Old-School Essentials and other tabletop fantasy roleplaying games.
Bundle of Holding: The Painted Wastelands
Absolute Penny Arcade, Part Four
Jan. 7th, 2026 09:00 pmpennyarcade_feedI hope you mofos didn't have any expectations going into the final Absolute strip, because we're gonna subvert all that shit. Scripts? Flipped. You simply aren't ready - flat-footed, naive - unless you thought it was gonna be another silly dumb one. Those people are still locked in. The others, ravaged by our potent psychological content, are lost - they're careening around the place like Beyblades.
Library Update #25: The Last Wall
Jan. 7th, 2026 01:12 pmlovelyangelThe wall behind my desk was still blank after the remodel. For displaying art, I lost several walls in the remodel, so I had all kinds of art I could put there, including two of my three large square framed prints. Or I could just put the wall back the way it was:
( Blank Wall Makeover, Below This Cut )
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( Blank Wall Makeover, Below This Cut )
Moon age daydream
Jan. 7th, 2026 06:21 pmcosmolinguistThis afternoon, while I was hiding from work and feeling sorry for myself because of a worsening headache, angelofthenorth asked me "So how was The Moonwalkers?"
I then talked for like fifteen minutes without stopping.
Oops.
I figured she'd have read D's entry about this from last night -- she's good like that -- so ( I started with the accessibility stuff: )
But this wasn't a huge problem, I was busy being excited about space.
"For 45 minutes I forgot about the world's problems," D said. I love that!
I...did not.
One of the Artemis II astronauts who was interviewed for this movie said something about Apollo being "ahead of its time" and immediately I was grumpily thinking no it's not! we're behind ours! JFK referencing the Wright Brothers made me ponder that it was about sixty years from them to the moonwalks, and it's been another sixty years since! What do we have to show for ourselves? (Lots of other things, I know, but no one's even left Earth orbit! Yes the ISS is cool but it's reaching the end of its lifetime, and it's still Soyuz ferrying people to and from! The splashdowns look beautiful and poetic at the end of a movie like this but where are our goddam spaceplanes?!)
Basically, everything I have to say about that I said in 2011 when the only thing more modern than Soyuz ceased operation and in 2012 when Neil Armstrong died.
But since I couldn't just link angelofthenorth to things in a real-life conversation, I had to attempt to re-create those thoughts and everything that links into them: my waning interest in "space" as the 2010s went on and SpaceX got increasingly dull (to me, I am not a rocket man) and -- even before it became so tainted by its association with Elon Musk -- depressing as a symbol of yet another thing being left to private whims which I believe is a public good. The only thing about these old entries that I wince to read tonight is my optimism and naïveté, but while I'm sad for my younger self I'm not ashamed of having those things.
Anyway. Like I said I probably talked for fifteen entire minutes without a break. I wasn't even self-conscious about it, until the end.
Luckily (?) angelofthenorth said it was cute, and endearing.
A week after last post
Jan. 7th, 2026 08:39 pmhunninghamMy father-in-law is staying with his daughter for a couple of weeks, so I have swapped one elderly relative for another and come up to Edinburgh to visit my mother. I came up on Saturday, and leaving tomorrow Thursday.
My mother doesn't need much help, so most of what I do is sit with her and listen. I have brought my laptop with me, and am also working while I'm here - this helps, it gives us a break from each other. I have also watched far too many episodes of a TV show called Bargain Hunt, and another show about house-hunting and lots of weather reporting. All the exciting weather is in the highlands, here it's just freezing temperatures & sleety rain. We've been to Tesco, where we managed to mislay each other, and my mother was horrified by the price of frozen mashed potatoes. The USA is gangstering into Venezuela.
It's been long visit, I'm not sleeping well, and I'm feeling very worn.
My mother doesn't need much help, so most of what I do is sit with her and listen. I have brought my laptop with me, and am also working while I'm here - this helps, it gives us a break from each other. I have also watched far too many episodes of a TV show called Bargain Hunt, and another show about house-hunting and lots of weather reporting. All the exciting weather is in the highlands, here it's just freezing temperatures & sleety rain. We've been to Tesco, where we managed to mislay each other, and my mother was horrified by the price of frozen mashed potatoes. The USA is gangstering into Venezuela.
It's been long visit, I'm not sleeping well, and I'm feeling very worn.
