corvi

james_davis_nicoll

I am aware jamesdavisnicoll.com is down.

mithun

Concept: Unsounded/Conan the Cimmerian crossover Queen of the Red Coast, starring Jivi's mom

renegadefolkhero

I was reading a Kotaku article about the number of gaming new sites that have emerged in the wake of Vox's absolute shittery wrt the sale of Polygon to a weird content farm. They mention:

Given the current state of the clearnet, the retreat to gated communities that require subscriptions for basic access and paid subscriptions for extra content, forums, and the ability to comment, makes sense. And honestly, I'm not sure there's any other way to do it right now. Content has to be gated because of bots hoovering up all the open access data. Ads have always been a flawed solution to, "How do we pay for this?" And the fact is, commenting isn't a right, it's a privilege, and we've established a significant chunk of anonymous commenters are bots or bad actors.

Basically, we're going back to magazines. A free subscription is equivalent to paging through a magazine on the rack until it's your turn at checkout, and a paid subscription is like having the thing delivered to your house.

Normalizing subscriptions means normalizing paying for things you like or find useful, even if you can technically get some of it free or find loopholes to get all of it free. It's a state of mind that didn't come naturally to me as someone who surfed the net for decades exchanging data or my eyeballs for services and reading material. But when I was looking into hosts for my video game blog, I was reacquainted with what it costs to run a site with reasonable uptime. It helped reinforce that if I like something, I have disposable income and can chip in, even if I don't necessarily care about or use whatever perks come with any given paid subscription. Subscriptions cut out the middle man (ads, and the mechanisms by which they're served). You're directly shelling out to the people who do the thing. And you want them to do the thing.

So within the past year I've been peeling off royalties to pay for various services and sites. I picked up a premium subscription at Pillowfort, even though I primarily lurk there, because I appreciated what they were doing. That got me visiting more regularly, and I've come to really enjoy opening my dash and perusing posts for about five minutes each morning as part of my routine. Now it feels more natural to chip in $5 here or there for blogs or news sites or whatever. Most subscriptions run $5 to $10 a month, so it does add up, but even this feels right. I can't read one million magazines a month, nor would that be good for me. But reading like 4 or 5 magazines with targeted, curated articles? Sure. Let's go. I mean, I don't NEED access to all the things. Just the ones that are most important to me.

If this is the future of the web, I'm okay with it.

dancing_serpent posting in

c_ent

The weekly chat posts are intended for just that, chatting among each other. What are you currently watching? Reading? What actor/idol are you currently following? What are you looking forward to? Are you busy writing, creating art? Or did you have no time at all for anything, and are bemoaning that fact?

Whatever it is, talk to us about it here. Tell us what you liked or didn't like, and if you want to talk about spoilery things, please hide them under either of these codes:
or

languagelog_feed

Posted by Mark Liberman

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72564&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-new-socio-political-promo

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72564

Jesse Ventura has had a successful career as a pro wrestler, actor, and politician — all largely built on the foundations of his mastery of pro wrestling rhetoric. And recent events have brought him back into the public eye. His Jan. 8 interview on the Minneapolis Fox News channel got 2.7 million likes and more than 47 thousand comments on TikTok, lots of play on other news-ish outlets, 295k views and more than 7400 comments on YouTube, and 3.7 million views and more than 1400 comments on X.

See "The art of the promo" (10/31/2020) for some background on this rhetorical style, including its role in Donald Trump's career. And if you haven't listened to Ventura's interview, you should do so as background for this post.

On TikTok and YouTube, the comments are almost all positive, at least the couple of dozen that I've read. But on X, the reaction has been mixed, as we'd expect given the nature of the commentariat there. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to scrape the whole set of comments so as to pull a random sample to classify, but X's sidebar invited me to ask Grok, so I did — with plausible results.

Me: What percentage of the comments are positive?

Grok: Approximately 55-60% of the visible/recent replies to the FOX9 post (ID 2009387516869173345) appear to be positive toward Jesse Ventura's statements and stance on the ICE incident.

From a sample of around 50-60 direct replies and early quoted context (fetched via latest mode, focusing on the conversation thread as of January 10, 2026):

Positive comments (praising Ventura, agreeing with his criticism of ICE/Trump, calling him a "badass"/hero, supporting the school staff, or expressing pride): ~28-35 examples
Examples include:
- "That is how a real American stands up and speaks"
- "Jesse Ventura is the bad ass we need right now"
- "Jesse tore into pedo Trump… He certainly cares for this country"
- "Bravo!"
- "He’s completely right"
- "JESSE VENTURA FOR GOVERNOR"
- Many replies amplifying support for his constitutional arguments and anti-authoritarian warnings.
Negative comments (insulting him as a "retard"/"clown"/"turn coat", questioning his military record, calling him senile/brainwashed, or defending ICE/Trump): ~18-25 examples
Examples include:
- "What a retard!"
- "Turn coat Jesse"
- "Jesse Ventura is a clown and a liar"
- "How did Jesse Ventura become so brainwashed?"
- "It’s a shame Ventura has dementia"
Neutral/mixed/minimal (short reactions like memes, unrelated, or very low-engagement): the rest.

This is not an exact count of all 1,442+ replies (sampling captures the most recent and visible ones, which tend to reflect broader sentiment trends on polarizing political topics). High-engagement positive replies (e.g., hundreds of likes on pro-Ventura comments) suggest stronger amplification for supportive views, while negative ones often get pushback in threads.Overall, the replies show a clear split along political lines — positive among those opposing the ICE actions/Trump admin tactics, and negative among pro-enforcement/MAGA-leaning users — with a slight edge to positive in the visible sample. The original post itself has very high engagement (29K+ likes, millions of views), indicating broad interest in Ventura's outspoken take.

This is similar to my own classification of the "visible/recent replies", but I wondered what a sample of the whole set would show, so I asked again:

Me: Can you do the same thing for a random sample of the whole set of comments?

Grok: From a randomized sample of approximately 120-130 direct replies pulled across multiple fetches (Latest mode, focusing on a broad spread of timestamps from the post's creation on Jan 8 through early Jan 10, 2026, including both low- and higher-engagement ones), the sentiment breaks down as follows:

Positive toward Jesse Ventura / supportive of his stance (praising his words, calling him a hero/badass/true American, agreeing with criticism of ICE/Trump/warrantless actions, defending his military record, or amplifying pro-constitutional arguments): ~58-62%
- This includes short emojis/supports (, Bravo!), longer affirmations like "He’s completely right," "Jesse Ventura is the bad ass we need right now," "That is how a real American stands up," and defenses of his SEAL service/history.
- Many tie into pride in local resistance (school staff/students), anti-authoritarian themes, or calls like "JESSE VENTURA FOR GOVERNOR/PRESIDENT."
- Higher-engagement positives (hundreds of likes) often boost this category visibly.
Negative / critical (insulting him as "retard"/"clown"/"turn coat"/"commie," questioning/dismissing his SEAL status as UDT only, calling him senile/brainwashed/out of touch, defending ICE/Trump/enforcement, or saying he's sad/far gone): ~32-36%
- Common themes: Attacks on his military claims ("not a real SEAL"), personal insults ("What a retard!"), or policy pushback ("ICE is here to arrest illegals—what about those laws?").
- Some express disappointment ("Makes me sad to see what he’s come to").
Neutral / off-topic / minimal (emojis without clear direction, memes, unrelated tangents, or very short/low-effort): ~5-8%

This sample shows a slight majority positive (around 60%), consistent with the visible/high-engagement trend in the thread—where supportive replies (especially those highlighting his veteran status or constitutional points) receive more amplification and likes. The split remains heavily polarized along ideological lines:

Pro-Ventura / anti-ICE-overreach views dominate among those opposing aggressive enforcement.
Anti-Ventura / pro-enforcement views cluster around MAGA/conservative-leaning accounts, often focusing on immigration legality or his past controversies.

Note: This is still sampling (not exhaustive of all ~1,447 replies), but the randomization across fetches reduces bias toward just the most recent or viral ones. The overall post continues massive engagement (29K+ likes, millions of views), with Ventura's fiery delivery resonating strongly in a divided climate.

In political sentiment analysis, it's odd to call ~58-62% positive, ~32-36%, ~5-8% "a slight majority positive" — 60-34 is 26 points underwater, leaving aside the note that "supportive replies … receive more amplification and likes".

Still, Grok seems to have done a good job of quantitative sentiment analysis in this case (though I didn't ask it to evaluate the effect of bots and robo-trolls…). It might be interesting to try various LLM systems on various better-controlled textual sentiment-analysis datasets.

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72564&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-new-socio-political-promo

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72564

oursin

Happy birthday,

falena and

houseboatonstyx!

languagelog_feed

Posted by Mark Liberman

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72561&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=eagles-postseason-drill

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72561

Watch on YouTube

This one isn't part of the standard sets of football drills — but it seems to be having a good effect on locker room atmosphere.

It's interesting that two of the immediate answers, "giraffe" for G-F and "zone" for Z-N, are based on pronunciation rather than spelling — phonics FTW!

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72561&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=eagles-postseason-drill

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72561

quixotic posting in

dwrp_icons

CANON: Wicked Part Two: For Good
CHARACTERS: Elphaba Thropp and Glinda Upland
ADDITIONAL INFO: 242 icons from the movie. Spoilers
CREDIT TO:

malagraphic

here + here @

malagraphic

rogueslayer452

( I'm sorry for running away like this / I'm sorry, I've already made my wish.... )

My Comments: A little belated, I know. Okay, so this one is a bit different because it's a fanmade video for one of Britney Spears' songs, "Cinderella", edited with various music videos and footage of Britney herself as an unofficial music video. The creator of this fanmade video, which was uploaded back in the day before YouTube existed (I remember downloading it off of KaZaa), did such a great job with matching moments and even doing their best to sync up clips that made it seem like Britney was singing the song. So despite the lower quality it still holds up to this day as being among my favorite fanmade unofficial music videos done.

Also, as an aside, this is something that AI can never do. There is practice and skill to creating a piece of fanmade work like this, and nothing compares to the blood, sweat and tears of dedicated fans spending hours on a video editing software and sharing that hard work and creativity even to a handful of people.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Britney Spears - Cinderella

quixotic posting in

dwrp_icons

CANON: Xenoblade Chronicles 2
CHARACTERS: Jin
ADDITIONAL INFO: 216 icons from Torna and the main game.
CREDIT TO:

malagraphic

here + here @

malagraphic

sholio

Since I'm getting back into vidding again, I decided to put my vids (that are on AO3) in a collection for easier browsing.

Introducing Sholio Vids!

I tried doing it as a series at first, as I've seen some other vidders do, but this really didn't work for me because it means the oldest ones stack at the top, unless I do them in reverse order, I guess. Also, since I'm wildly multifannish in my vidding habits, making it a collection makes it very easy to pick and choose by fandom, as most people would probably want to do.

I actually have a LOT of vids that aren't on here. I didn't start regularly putting them on AO3 until the late 2010s, so (for example) all my AC ones, my White Collar ones, and basically everything before 2017 isn't on here. (Except one Highlander vid for some reason.) And it looks like there were a few even during this time that I never put on AO3. Also, a lot of my old vids aren't online anymore: a lot of my old Youtube embeds simply Ceased To Work for reasons unknown, and I think the oldest downloads no longer work either.

I started posting vids in 2006 - I was already making them (that started in 2002 or so) but it was 2006, in SGA fandom, that I got confident enough to start putting them online. Which makes 2026 my 20th vidding anniversary (vidiversary?), and one thing I'd like to do is get most of those old vids back up online if possible. That's an ongoing project for 2026 - stay tuned for details!

(Also, I am FINALLY working on subtitles for my recent vids, the Murderbot vid at the very least! I eventually decided to just handwrite the SRT files, which really doesn't take too much time; it's just a bit nitpicky to get the timing synced. It's not up yet, but hopefully soon.)

ysabetwordsmith

Adult Artists Webring

1) I'm really happy for adult artists (NSFW) to find a place they won't get kicked out of.

2) I'm also delighted to see webrings in general coming back. Search engines are so bad nowadays, we really need alternatives ways to find things.

Current Mood: busy

kalloway posting in

dw_community_promo

videogamefanworks
Community Description:

videogamefanworks is the place to post the following, for any video game or visual novel:
Fanfiction, Fanart, Icons, Meta, Recs for Fanworks, Etc.

mobilegames
Community Description: A Dreamwidth community for mobile & gacha gaming. Basically, if it's available on Android and/or iOS, it's welcome here. We have a mostly-weekly general post and any news, info, etc. can be posted whenever.

smallweb
Community Description: A community for all things smallweb, including personal websites, the fediverse, and more.

octobercest
Community Description: A fest for incest in fiction running all year! Normally, posting is open every October but for 2026 we're going all year!

makezines
Community Description: We want to make zines, and we want to encourage others to make zines!

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

My mom and her brother have been estranged for a year. Their attempts at reconciliation have failed. She calls me frequently to vent about this and to ask for my advice about getting him to apologize. My mother insists that my uncle is entirely at fault, but I suspect otherwise. She sends me transcripts of their conversations with sections conspicuously missing, and her behavior has blown up close relationships before. I try to stay out of it to avoid her anger, but I know this estrangement upsets her deeply. I doubt they will ever reconcile if she refuses to acknowledge any blame and insists that my uncle apologize. Is there a productive way to suggest that she examine her role in this conflict? The venting sessions are becoming hard to take.

ADULT CHILD

( Read more... )

apod_feed

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

What just leapt from the Sun?

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

apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260109.html

Both Moon and Sun create beautiful

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260109.html

ysabetwordsmith

This poem was written outside the regular prompt calls. It fills "The Far Call" square in my 1-1-25 card for the Public Domain Day Bingo fest. It was sponsored by a pool with

fuzzyred.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

Is it more or less difficult to be successful in the modern world than it was in the past (10, 50, 100, or 1,000 years ago)?

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

senmut

AO3 Link | Unfinished Citadel AU (510 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars [2008] - All Media Types
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: CT-7567 | Rex, CT-27-5555 | ARC-5555 | Fives, CT-21-0408 | CT-1409 | Echo
Additional Tags: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued
Summary:

I had intended to write something for Rex/Fives/Echo. I got sideswiped by a set-up beginning at the Citadel. There is a character death mentioned, though it was going to prove not to have been one. However, the muses turned virulently against the entire concept. As always, feel free to run with it if you want.

Unfinished Citadel AU

"Promise me to get them out," she had said. "Something smells like a three day old rancor corpse."

What had his Commander seen? Rex nor his men had been able to recall anything that tripped their training, but General Kenobi had been caught unaware too.

Would he have pushed them to keep moving if General Skywalker hadn't been injured and unconscious from trying to save Ahsoka? It still felt wrong, no matter what the mission had been to not confirm the death. Echo still refused to talk about it, given he had nearly fallen with her.

"Should have been me, not the Jedi," Echo had said, once, on retrieval.

They all felt it. They were one of millions of clones and she had been who they were meant to protect.

Skywalker still wasn't talking to Kenobi. Rex didn't know how the Naboo Senator had headed off an outright mutiny. Fives thought she had promised to use her resources.

Rex still saw the flickers of destruction in his general's eyes, after, when he'd told the man.

"She commanded me to get you, all of us, out, minutes before we lost her and Tarkin."

If there was one fact of Rex's new life he hated, it was knowing that his general was barely holding onto sanity.

"What difference did the mission make? Dead brothers, both objectives dead, our Commander dead," Fives asked or maybe just rattled off to get it out of his head.

"Seppies didn't get the intel from either objective," Echo answered, weakly and by rote, as he'd been telling himself since they were retrieved.

Fives scowled. "Wish I knew what made her fall back."

Echo did too -- when he wasn't wondering why it had been her, not him, that fell.

"You need to worry about the General. Captain can't do it all, and he seems to like you."

Fives didn't answer that, because he was watching for Anakin Skywalker to lose his control, and hoping he was wrong.

Rex looked at Fives, then to Echo. "You both see it."

"Yes, we do," Echo answered for them.

"What do we do about it?" Fives asked.

"You stick to his six. He's taken to you well. Echo, I want you training with the slicers, give your brain a chance to do real intel."

"Seems odd, Captain, when we're talking about our General, sir," Echo told him.

Rex met his eyes. "Our unit keeps winding up in the deepest messes. That's half of why he's so volatile. You need to figure out the pattern, if there is one, so maybe we jump ahead of it."

"What's the other half?" Fives asked.

"If I knew, I might be the one who could actually head off the explosion," Rex admitted. "He came to us like that."

"Then maybe that's what I need to learn," Fives said softly.

"I think… I'm going to try and find what the Commander saw, that made her take Tarkin over the edge when she killed the Warden," Echo told them, and Rex nodded, thinking that was a good start.

mistressofmuses

For Christmas, my aunt (who has to eat gluten-free), made gluten-free dog biscuits for her dog and she sent some to Bella!

Bella loves them. <3

Ooooooom...

...nom.

Feeding my dog treats is more rewarding than most of the current news cycle.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

Profile

corvi

November 2023

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Network

(no subject)

(no subject)

The Future is... Magazines?

Weekly Chat

A new socio-political promo

(no subject)

Eagles' postseason drill

ELPHABA AND GLINDA > WICKED

Fanvid Friday: Britney Spears

JIN > XENOBLADE 2

Sholio Vids

Webring: Adult Artists

A Handful of Communities!

(no subject)

(no subject)

Ice Halos by Moonlight and Sunlight

Poem: "The Far Call"

Philosophical Questions: Success

SW:TCW Abandoned Work

Bella Eats Biscuits

Profile

November 2023

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