flexagon | Network

It’s the last day of my month – and I have to say that it was a great month overall (if we ignore how much time I spent on PDXWLF... but other than that...) I had some excellent indulgences – and then my friends and family spoiled me as well.

Birthday Gifts from Family and Friends

My kids loaded me up with books I wanted, and Trisha and Nancy lavished me with fancy caramels. (My tsundoku stack is again huge – but we’re not talking about that right now.)

On Sunday, my kids and I celebrated my birthday with our favorite pizza. I got our usual order. With 18% tip, the total bill snuggled in just under $100, but I don’t mind. It’s worth it to us.

Abby’s Pizza for our Family Dinner
February 22, 2026
iPhone 13 mini photo

I also have a coupon from Abby’s for a free mini pizza for my birthday, so I’ll be making a return trip tomorrow. Actually, I have several coupons/offers for free birthday food – and they all expire on March 5, so I think I’m set for lunches for next week.

The month was too busy with the PDXWLF overload – but this is the last time, and next year Angel’s Month will be more relaxing. The trend is good. This year, I enjoyed being spoiled – a lot.

lovelyangel

For a tech person, I’m pretty old school when it comes to certain things. For example, I don’t subscribe to any of the streaming music services (although I do have YouTube Music as part of my YouTube Premium subscription). Apple Music is especially problematic as Apple actually removes your own copies of music from the Apple Music app and replaces those songs with its own master copies – whether you like it or not. It’s possible to lose unique or special versions of songs in your library.

So I’ll never subscribe to Apple Music – and I manage my music library the way I always have since the days of ripping CDs and filling my iPod. I have too much music to download it all to my iPhone, so I sync only selected playlists and albums.

Years ago my playlists started getting corrupted. The songs were correct and played properly – but some (maybe half?) of the song/album cover artwork got randomly replaced by cover art from a different song in my library. It was super annoying – it’s been super annoying for years. But the music played fine, and I largely ignored it.

I had made a couple attempts to research a fix, but what I was told to do seemed like a horrid and dangerous pain – so I didn’t even make the attempt.

Today, though, I decided to research the situation again. I was a little more confident now that I’m armed with Kagi. I did a search for iphone music showing wrong album cover, and the top three results were immediately informative and useful.

So on my iPhone I went into Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Music > Edit > All Songs and deleted all the songs. Then I connected the iPhone to my Mac and resync’d all of my playlists – twice. (I’ve learned that I need to activate the SYNC action two times, and it’s the second time the app Syncs that the music gets transferred.) The Music app informed me that it was downloading 2000 songs to my iPhone.

When that was done, I checked my phone – and all album covers are correct! I’m very happy about this!

A Playlist on My iPhone 13 mini

I’m pretty happy with Kagi, too.

slimemoldtimemold_feed

Posted by slimemoldtimemold

https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2026/02/28/links-for-february-2026/

http://slimemoldtimemold.com/?p=4999

Nicky Case: Vitamin D & Omega-3 may have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants. Along with the actual points being made about depression, this essay is a great introduction to effect sizes.

A lot of population numbers are fake

Cosimo Research: Does Mouth Taping Reduce Snoring? & Does Mouth Taping Change Facial Structure? Highlights from the methods section: “there were 135 vertical nights and 116 mustache nights”

Cosimo Research: Eau de Vagina AKA “the most rigorous study on vabbing ever undertaken and hence the best available scientific evidence”

Theoretical Structural Archaeology: Twelve reasons why Stonehenge was a building

Fiction: Julia

Sometimes we talk of ideas being “Big if true”. Well, they don’t get much bigger than true than this: ABC’s of Blessed Water (cf. We out here making mana potions)

A Journalist is a Lawyer

https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2026/02/28/links-for-february-2026/

http://slimemoldtimemold.com/?p=4999

conuly

This is some wag the dog garbage, but with worse naming, isn’t it.

troisoiseaux

Read Beowulf— or, first, I saw Beowulf, A Retelling, a one-man show in a pop-up bar at a local arts center, which was a very good introduction to Beowulf, since it was literally just a guy telling the story in his own (conversational, compelling) words, weaving in references to modern heroes and villains* as a sort of touchstone for how parts of the story would have resonated in ye olde days and using instruments for sound effects (e.g., a violin bow across the strings of an electric guitar for Grendel's dying screech). It was very cool! Obviously then had to actually read Beowulf (the Francis Gummere translation was the first one available) and I'm glad I had the crash-course version first; it helped to know the shape of the story and have something to mentally translate it back to. (Plus, if I'd had to figure out how to mentally pronounce Healfdene and Ecgtheow on my own, I think I simply would have not.) What really struck me was the sheer sense of time of it all— the oldest known Old English poem, and possibly a story that was hundreds of years old by the time it was written down, and still there were recurring mentions of "heirlooms", which might be a quirk of translation but does suggest the weight of history behind this story that's already really, really old, and at the same time, I found myself thinking about its history in the other direction— reading/listening to it like, okay, yes, I can see what Tolkien got from this.

( footnote )

Read Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice, an absolutely delightful 1944 murder mystery in which the three precocious children of a widowed mystery novelist go meddling in the murder investigation next door, while - as a side project - trying to set their mother up with the lead detective on the case.

In War and Peace, I've hit the first scene that made it into Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812— Pierre challenged Dolokhov to a duel (technically over a minor affront at a club dinner! actually over rumors of Dolokhov having an affair with Pierre's wife!) and, to everyone's surprise, managed both to hit Dolokhov and to avoid being hit— and recalled how many of the lyrics are just verbatim lines from the book. At the same time, Andrei (presumed dead after the battle of Austerlitz) returned home just in time for his wife, Lise, to die in childbirth. :( One thing I've started to notice is that everything in this book seems to happen in pairs: Pierre's and Andrei's marriages ended, albeit in very different ways, in almost back-to-back chapters; as discussed in my last post, Nikolai and Andrei had foil-like experiences of meeting their heroes at Austerlitz; Kuragin successfully maneuvers his daughter Helene into a marriage to Pierre and then immediately fails to marry off his son Anatole to Mary Bolkonskaya...?

Current Music: Grendel's Mother - The Mountain Goats

cosmolinguist

Thanks to otter for sharing this video the other day: Emotional Neglect: Healing from the Hidden Trauma of What Didn't Happen

I got around to watching it and it hit me so hard I needed to write this huge long thing about it. It's mostly transcript of the parts of the video that I wanted to make a note of, because it's not very accessible to me otherwise. But my thoughts are sprinkled around the block quotes of course.

( Emotional Neglect )

( Emotions Draw Our Attention to What Matters to Us )

( Shame, and Phobia of Inner Experiences )

( Existential Loneliness )

( Unconscious Self-Abandonment )

( Sensitivity to Rejection )

( Using Emotions to Connect Your Inner World to the Outer World )

cosmolinguist

I started getting a migraine halfway through lift club this morning.

I ignored it of course -- just the aura, at that point -- knowing that I'd have a while before it got, y'know, debilitating.

I enjoyed the rest of the exercises. I did nearly fall both at the beginning and the end of the escalator I took to get from the tram to the train, oops. But also I got home fine, via B&M for medicinal snacks -- mostly sugar, which I often crave during migraines, but also one particular 59p instant ramen thing that I suddenly needed, and enjoyed very much for my lunch.

It was that rare rough day for the whole house: D's IBS was playing up and he had to make his brain work on paperwork so much this afternoon that when he finally emerged I wondered if migraines were contagious (luckily he perked up a little after eating something). V slept through all their alarms and so has been off-kilter all day. I slept for four hours this afternoon and after that reached the point where I felt okay unless I tried to move or even think too hard.

Then we watched a Starfleet Academy episode and as soon as Sam mentioned Our Town I was like ...you come to me, on the day of my migraine, and now I'm gonna have to cry? (Crying is fine but a physically unenjoyable experience for me at the best of times. Which, we've established, today is not.) (I got a tear in my eye, but even that was only at the very end.)

Like I've said here, Our Town is largely responsible for why I write almost every day here. "I can't look at everything hard enough" fucking haunts me (of course we heard that line in the episode), and it's important to me to look at things as hard as I can while they are happening.

tl;dr: People are actually bad at predicting how much they'll enjoy reading back what they've written about their lives! Writing about the ordinary experiences of your life can be even more cheering to you when you go back and read them than the extraordinary ones.

A nice reminder on an excessively ordinary day.

cosmolinguist

I slept like ass again, but if I'm gonna wake up at 6am it was nice to wake up to good news: the obvious bigots of Reform didn't win, and the more normie bigots of Labour didn't win either -- the Greens won!

I don't really care what this means for Labour or Keir Starmer -- it has never in my 20 years of living here made much tangible difference who the Prime Minister is -- I'm just glad to have an MP who might not be totally useless because I've had enough of that the last couple years! We've had a functionally useless MP in Gorton and Denton since Gwynne lost the Labour whip and his ministerial post but kept voting along with Labour anyway. Worst of both worlds: he couldn't really advocate for us any more but still voted like he would've before. Not that he was much use as public health minister: my hopes were high when he first got the position, especially as he was open about his Long Covid (which I think ended up being why he had to resign on health grounds), but he was a real disappointment to people I know who have ME or LC who'd also expected him to help, and he wasn't interested in advocating for clean air in public places or anything that would help with the ongoing pandemic, and my attempt to explain to him the public health implications of transphobia-as-policy (like the totally-predictable spike in teen suicides) didn't get anywhere either.

And more widely, of course, this is making some people feel more hopeful than we have in a long time. My queer and community-defense group chats were full of relief, congratulations to the volunteers we know who knocked on doors and did other thankless work for this (in the rain! even for Manchester it's been rainy lately), and a little bit of giddy meme-making.

There's all kinds of speculation now on what this means for the upcoming local elections in England (and devolved government elections in both Wales and Scotland, but they get to have nationalistic parties to vote for there too), as well as for Labour and Reform and so on.

But for now, there's a lot of hope in a lot of people who didn't have much (I caught a link to this video and watched it before I realized it's Owen Jones, heh), and that is a great gift.

rolanni

Saturday. The almost-full moon is casting tree-shadows over the snow in the Long Back Yard.

I wrote new words today! And did actual Brain Work on the WIP. And changed the bed, and did a load of laundry, and one's duty the cats; made lunch and was able to eat it, after.

Yes, we have reached the part of the whole pain thing where -- POOF! All gone. Just joking. You may now carry on with your life until I decide to randomly take five freaking days and fill them with pain and despair.

Sigh.

The cats were very happy that I joined them in Steve's office to work today. It really is the preferred space for serious endeavors, though the comfy chair in my office is, of course, very nice.

I made the Executive Decision to join Cook Unity, and have ordered in four meals, which will be delivered on Friday. This means I am guaranteed to have four (hopefully) good meals to eat, and will take the whole Cooking Angst off of my Angst Plate, which is currently overfull with Deadline Angst. I'm viewing this as a short-term thing to lower the overall anxiety in the household. Since they say I can cancel or put it on hold at my discretion, as soon as the book's turned in, I'll be doing that. Yes, I need Staff. Also, probably, a keeper.

Looking forward to next week -- we have Rookie's second birthday on Monday, March 2. All of Tuesday is reserved for errands, with needlework in the evening. Wednesday, Thursday, and most of Friday I am Free to Write, and on Saturday?

I'm going to a magic show.

So, I'm really, yanno, happy, that my back has decided to return to normal.

Yes, I've seen the news.

How's everybody doing?

Oh. Here's a picture of Rook helping me make the bed.

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

orangeblossomteas posting in

bookclub_dw

March's book is The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher.

The discussion post will go up on March 31st, 2026. If you think of any questions while you're reading, leave a comment on this post and I'll include it in the discussion post.

nanila

Watch on YouTube

I spent a lot of the first half of the month travelling, and the second half of the month recovering from the travelling while also working. I feel this video reflects those two halves pretty accurately.

harpers_child

"No this is my shirt. We cannot share the shirt. Stop hitting my face with your tail." <- conversation I am currently having with Radar (who does not know what she wants in this moment)

I fell over for a while recovering from Mardi Gras. Mostly physically, but also emotionally. It's also the season to swap from heat to AC every other day and then back again so my head has been hurting. Screen time has been limited. Klinger is happy about all the couch cuddles.

Three things make a post!

1. The BAFTAs racism thing. Jordan and Lindo shouldn't have had to hear it. I can't imagine how awful it was to hear that on a night that should have been about celebrating the cultural juggernaut Sinners is and the work that went into it.

Davidson had taken steps to limit his impact on the show. (Sat 41 rows back. Asked that his tics be edited out of the broadcast.) The BBC purposefully putting a mic on Davidson to make sure the presenters heard the slurs he couldn't help saying was shitty. (He left when he realized there was a microphone near him.) The show was recorded two hours in advance and several other slurs Davidson said were cut, leaving that one in was hurtful and harmful to many people.

This was handled in such a disrespectful way towards everyone involved. I think the theory that it was done on purpose to drum up views is right. The BBC knew Davidson was going to say horrible things (he can't help it) and chose the worst one to leave in.

2. Mom is sick and has "a cold" that has laid her out for a week. No she hasn't tested for anything. It's just "a cold". She hasn't sought medical help even though it's lasting longer than normal. She's arguing about taking OTC medication to help. This is some "offer it up" bullshit that's worse than usual because it's Lent. (Suffering will not make you holy. Take the fucking meds.)

3. I got some of the water activated eyeliners from HoloGrave. They all passed the allergy test (put on arm and wait for a few hours). I guess I'll paint on my face for enrichment some in the near future.

3b. My comfy pants from Lady Epi came in hours ago and are currently in the wash. Yay for comfy pants.

Radar has settled down for lap!cat! time and I'm out of words.

snickfic

Here are a couple of my favorite winter soup recipes. They're from cookbooks, so no handy online version to link to. So this is for you and also for me, so I can access these away from my cookbooks.

( Pork and hominy soup )

( Sausage, White Bean, and Kale Soup With Besar )

sanguinity

For those unfamiliar,

fandomtrumpshate is a fandom charity auction that supports nonprofits working to counteract some of the harms of the current presidential administration. Supported causes include trans rights, disability rights, immigrant rights, voting rights, libraries, Gaza, and more. (Please see the complete list of supported organizations, including which nonprofits accept international donations.)

I'm offering fic! In three fandoms:

D.K. Broster novels (Jacobite Trilogy, Wounded Name, "Mr. Rowl", or a novel of your choice)
Hornblower -- any of the various media, from novels to movies to radio
Vorkosigan Saga

For the details of each fandom (characters, ships, etc.), please see my auction listing! The listing includes my email for questions, but I'm also happy to discuss any questions here in comments or private messages. Please do reach out if you're curious about anything, or whether I'm up for a particular kind of story.

Sanguinity's auction listing

$15 minimum bid for 2K words
$50 minimum bid for 7K words

Bidding opens Tuesday March 3rd, and closes Saturday March 7th. (I'll post again when bidding opens.)

And of course I'm not the only one auctioning fanworks! If you feel moved, please do have a browse of

foth2026offerings (check out the sticky post for the best ways to search the offerings) to see if there's something that interests you.

midnight_heavenly_bodies posting in

addme

Name: C.K. or Chester

Age: 36, nearly 37, growing old mandatory, growing up optional

I mostly post about: Culture Club/Boy George & Jon Moss (my hyperfixation of 22 years and counting), Linkin Park, wrestling (classic SMW/WWF, Jim Cornette, and my deeply cursed WWE 2K25 Universe), my OCs who are realer to me than most people, witchcraft/spirit work/folk healing/moon rituals/grief magic, retro gaming, emotional overshares that read like journal entries from a possessed poet, fanfiction that makes people unwell at 2am, chaos, and the occasional Reddit food rabbit hole

My hobbies are: Writing fic that's 70% emotional breakdown, 20% worldbuilding, and 10% people getting railed in a meaningful way, hexing cults with sigils and sass, collecting music like a religion, drawing OCs, being a haunted glitter goblin with eyeliner and vengeance, building 48-year fanfiction universes with fully documented timelines and named children, going to work like a normal person and coming home a completely different entity

My fandoms are: Culture Club (I'm writing a massive AU called Colour By Numbers spanning 1978-2026, and a supernatural [not the show] fic called The Rhythm of the Hollow), Linkin Park (Bennoda forever), wrestling (SMW/WWF/WCW but mainly the universes in my head)

I'm looking for people who: are too weird for Reddit, too raw for Instagram, too smart for Twitter/X, overshare about their OCs like a religion, cry over character development, understand that Jon Moss deserved better, write long posts, and don't find it weird that I've named all the children in my fictional universe including the surprise baby

My posting schedule: Erratic. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes I vanish for three weeks and return with an entire AU timeline and a new OC

Dealbreakers: Racism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia, antisemitism, being a dick, Scientology apologists, anyone who thinks Mike Shinoda is evil because of an Instagram reel, "isn't wrestling fake?", "you still like Linkin Park?"

Before adding me: I'm a trans man (he/him, they/them). Autistic and ADHD. I write mpreg unapologetically. I am a Zionist and tired of explaining what that actually means. Pro-AI. I smoke weed. I am extremely defensive of Jon Moss and will write essays about it. My AO3 is CampCornette69 and yes that's a wrestling reference

Current Mood: bouncy

primeideal

Hello, thank you for creating for me! I'm also primeideal on Ao3. Treats are enabled.

Note for this particular exchange: I hope to be traveling at the time gifts are revealed, I may not be able to comment promptly. I look forward to savoring my gift when I have time to sit at a computer and read!

DNWs:

-explicit sex (but fade-to-black or innuendo is fine)

-underage characters having sex

-rape/noncon

-moralizing/didactic stories (characters Learning An Important Lesson about the value of tolerance, etc.)

-non-canonical allegories of current events and/or contemporary politics

-themes of cynicism or futility, or that the (canon's) main plotlines "are for nothing"

Dune Movies

Chani & Liet

(Formats: Books/Articles, Journals/Diaries, Letters/Emails/Audio/Video transcripts)

Chani doesn't have a last name in movie canon, so if you're working just from the movies--what relationship do these two have? Something comparing and contrasting their relationships to Fremen religion/prophecy/fate versus free will, or interactions with the empire, could be neat. Scientific articles that Liet writes? Is she training Chani as a successor?

Alternatively: in book canon, Liet is Chani's father, suggesting that movie!Liet could be Chani's mother, which adds another layer of delicious wrinkles to everything. Letters they write when Liet is away on empire business? Is Chani curious or resentful about her family elsewhere in the galaxy? What hopes does Liet have for Chani, even if they never leave the pages of her journal?

Stormlight Archive

Shallan & any

(Formats: Books/Articles, Journals/Diaries, Letters/Emails/Audio/Video transcripts)

I think there's a lot of potential for correspondence in the post-canon era, with Shallan trying to communicate via seons from the Cognitive Realm. Worrying about Adolin? Theorizing with Navani or Jasnah as to what this might mean for the Radiants? Mentoring Gaz or some of her other squires remotely? Negotiating with Thaidakar? (I'm familiar with the rest of the Cosmere if you want to work in characterization/worldbuilding from other Cosmere books.) Trying to track down her family?

If you're interested in Shallan/Adolin, feel free to make it shippy, but I'm not interested in poly-shipping for this request. I subscribe to (and enjoy) the theory that Shallan is pregnant when we see her last, so I'd be happy with an OC kid showing up, but no need to include that if it's not something you're interested in.

It would also be neat to see more from Shallan's journals/sketchbooks/research during canon. Assignments she completed for Jasnah in Kharbranth? More of the spanreed notes from when she was "texting" Adolin in his self-imposed jail term? Research articles about the Radiants or Unmade?

I'm not super interested in Shallan's alter egos, so I'd prefer if they weren't a focus (mentions are fine).

Worst Journey

Birdie & Cherry & Wilson, Birdie/Cherry

(Formats: Books/Articles, Journals/Diaries, Letters/Emails/Audio/Video transcripts)

I love the contrast of all the different character voices--not just narrator!Cherry writing a decade after the fact, but also diary!Cherry in the moment and epistolary!Bowers being very proud of his cute green hat. Maybe another incident with different POVs on the same event, whether it be future!Cherry interweaving his voice with present!Cherry or just the contrast between different voices in people's respective diaries/letters home? (Doesn't have to be limited to the requested characters, outside POV from other crew is also great!) Letters they wrote to each other after the return party turned back, for dramatic irony and sadness?

For the tag "books and articles" in particular I'm imagining canon-divergence AUs. Everyone lives and Wilson gets to write nerdy research papers about the penguin eggs? The Winter Journey ends in tragedy, and maybe that changes the approach the polar party takes? Atkinson leads the group to search for Campbell's party in late 1912 and the world doesn't find out for years (or ever?) how close Scott et. al got? (Any of these premises could also work for other formats, of course!)

As usual, all of this is optional, anything about these fandoms/relationships will be great. Thanks for creating for me!

sovay

I have spent the literal entirety of my legally adult life watching the country I was born into try to fait accompli its way into Armageddon and I have to say that it was not an enticing novelty a quarter of a century ago, either.

Current Music: The Pack a.d., "Rid of Me"

hafnia

27 is late, of course, because I saw friends last night and didn't get home til late :D

27: If I had unlimited resources (including time), what hobby would I pursue?

There are two!

1). I learned how to oil paint when I was a teenager, I loved it (I was not very good at it, but that's fine), and I miss it. Would love to do it again at some point!

2). Stained glass.

Both are specifically, "money/having a space to do it in"; would also love to learn to blow glass someday (there's a bunch of workshops for it out here, oddly enough), but that's something where it's like, "I fully expect that I will try doing this and go, 'hmm, cool, not for me!'", whereas the other two are things I know I like. :D

28: Best moment of the last month?

Oh, seeing that my fucking sourdough worked and being able to make myself a sandwich with it (which was very good), almost definitely! :D

heleninwales

It's the last day of February and I've added another 7835 words to the novel. I've kept up with the Get Your Words Out habit pledge and either wrote or did something useful to progress the novel every day this month.

Writing progress
February writing goal: 8,000 words

A Deadly Gift

Total words this month: 7835 / 8,000 (96%)
Words in novel (to nearest 100 words): 89,400

Get Your Words Out

28/28 in February

57/300 so far for the year

Profile

flexagon

March 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Page Summary

lovelyangel - End of Angel’s Month
lovelyangel - Irritation Finally Quashed
slimemoldtimemold_feed - Links for February 2026
conuly - Jesus fuck again with this shit?
troisoiseaux - Recent reading (& more)
cosmolinguist - My introduction to "emotional neglect"
cosmolinguist - Ordinary days
cosmolinguist - Good news
rolanni - Same as it ever was...
minoanmiss - Indo-European Creation Myth
orangeblossomteas in bookclub_dw - March 2026 Book: The Hollow Places
nanila - 1SE for February 2026
harpers_child - "Do you know what you want in this moment?"
snickfic - yummy soups
sanguinity - Charity Auction!
midnight_heavenly_bodies in addme - I'm back after disappearing for a gazillion years again
primeideal - Dear Pen Pal (Unsent Letters 2026)
sovay - How about I create a mess and then solve the mess and then I'll be a hero
hafnia - Talking Meme Month - 27 and 28!
heleninwales - Writing progress

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Network

End of Angel’s Month

Irritation Finally Quashed

Links for February 2026

Jesus fuck again with this shit?

Recent reading (& more)

My introduction to "emotional neglect"

Ordinary days

Good news

Same as it ever was...

Indo-European Creation Myth

March 2026 Book: The Hollow Places

1SE for February 2026

"Do you know what you want in this moment?"

yummy soups

Charity Auction!

I'm back after disappearing for a gazillion years again

Dear Pen Pal (Unsent Letters 2026)

How about I create a mess and then solve the mess and then I'll be a hero

Talking Meme Month - 27 and 28!

Writing progress

Profile

March 2026

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