Reading Feed

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/01/06/

Posted by Samuel Pepys

(Twelfth Day). Up and Mr. Creed brought a pot of chocolate ready made for our morning draft, and then he and I to the Duke’s, but I was not very willing to be seen at this end of the town, and so returned to our lodgings, and took my wife by coach to my brother’s, where I set her down, and Creed and I to St. Paul’s Church-yard, to my bookseller’s, and looked over several books with good discourse, and then into St. Paul’s Church, and there finding Elborough, my old schoolfellow at Paul’s, now a parson, whom I know to be a silly fellow, I took him out and walked with him, making Creed and myself sport with talking with him, and so sent him away, and we to my office and house to see all well, and thence to the Exchange, where we met with Major Thomson, formerly of our office, who do talk very highly of liberty of conscience, which now he hopes for by the King’s declaration, and that he doubts not that if he will give him, he will find more and better friends than the Bishopps can be to him, and that if he do not, there will many thousands in a little time go out of England, where they may have it. But he says that they are well contented that if the King thinks it good, the Papists may have the same liberty with them. He tells me, and so do others, that Dr. Calamy is this day sent to Newgate for preaching, Sunday was se’nnight, without leave, though he did it only to supply the place; when otherwise the people must have gone away without ever a sermon, they being disappointed of a minister but the Bishop of London will not take that as an excuse. Thence into Wood Street, and there bought a fine table for my dining-room, cost me 50s.; and while we were buying it, there was a scare-fire in an ally over against us, but they quenched it. So to my brother’s, where Creed and I and my wife dined with Tom, and after dinner to the Duke’s house, and there saw “Twelfth Night” acted well, though it be but a silly play, and not related at all to the name or day.¹ Thence Mr. Battersby the apothecary, his wife, and I and mine by coach together, and setting him down at his house, he paying his share, my wife and I home, and found all well, only myself somewhat vexed at my wife’s neglect in leaving of her scarf, waistcoat, and night-dressings in the coach today that brought us from Westminster, though, I confess, she did give them to me to look after, yet it was her fault not to see that I did take them out of the coach. I believe it might be as good as 25s. loss or thereabouts.

So to my office, however, to set down my last three days’ journall, and writing to my Lord Sandwich to give him an account of Sir J. Lawson’s being come home, and to my father about my sending him some wine and things this week, for his making an entertainment of some friends in the country, and so home. This night making an end wholly of Christmas, with a mind fully satisfied with the great pleasures we have had by being abroad from home, and I do find my mind so apt to run to its old want of pleasures, that it is high time to betake myself to my late vows, which I will to-morrow, God willing, perfect and bind myself to, that so I may, for a great while, do my duty, as I have well begun, and increase my good name and esteem in the world, and get money, which sweetens all things, and whereof I have much need. So home to supper and to bed, blessing God for his mercy to bring me home, after much pleasure, to my house and business with health and resolution to fall hard to work again.

Footnotes

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/01/06/

siderea

2026 Jan 6: Görkem Şen (Yaybahar on YT): Yaybahar III Nadiri

Watch on YouTube

The description text:

The essence of gold was rare, he conquered with his virtue, offered his gifts and fell behind the sun...

Dedicated to the soul of my dear friend's father, Nadir Oğuz...

I am surmising that "Nadiri" means "Of Nadir". Yaybahar is the instrument, the artist is its inventor:

The name yaybahar (pronounced /jajba'har/) has Turkish origin. It is a composite of two words: yay means a "string" or a "coiled string" and bahar means the season "spring." According to Gorkem Sen, the name is derived from the idea of a new life or a new beginning. [1]

I assume this is the third one of its kind the artist has made.

Artist's website: https://www.gorkemsen.com/

jazzyjj posting in

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2026/01/another-year-for-jesus-francis-ridley.html

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

bruces_poems_feed

Posted by Bruce-the-Sheep

Another year for Jesus!
How can I wish for you
A greater joy or blessing,
O fellow-worker true?

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2026/01/another-year-for-jesus-francis-ridley.html

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/6/otter-sits-at-the-invisible-piano-and-belts-out-a-tune

Posted by Daily Otter

Via uso_otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/6/otter-sits-at-the-invisible-piano-and-belts-out-a-tune

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2026/01/06/a-sonnet-for-epiphany-13/

Posted by malcolmguite

http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/?p=9268

The Feast of the Epiphany falls on the 6th of January. Epiphany celebrates the arrival of the three wise men at the manger in Bethlehem has a special mystery and joy to it. Until now the story of the coming Messiah has been confined to Israel, the covenant people, but here suddenly, mysteriously, are three Gentiles who have intuited that his birth is good new for them too. Here is an Epiphany, a revelation, that the birth of Christ is not one small step for a local religion but a great leap for all mankind. I love the way that traditionally the three wise men (or kings) are shown as representing the different races and cultures and languages of the world. I love the combination in their character of diligence and joy. They ‘seek diligently’, but they ‘rejoice with exceeding great joy’! I love the way they loved and followed a star, but didn’t stop at the star, but rather let the star lead them to something beyond itself. Surely that is a pattern for all wise contemplation of nature whether in art or science. The last line of this poem is a little nod in the direction of Tennyson’s great poem Ulysses

This sonnet is drawn from my book Sounding the Seasons, which is available from Amazon etc or by order from your local bookshop, should you be lucky enough to have one.

As always you can hear the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button if it appears, or by clicking on the title of the poem which will take you to the audioboom page.

Epiphany

It might have been just someone else’s story,
Some chosen people get a special king.
We leave them to their own peculiar glory,
We don’t belong, it doesn’t mean a thing.
But when these three arrive they bring us with them,
Gentiles like us, their wisdom might be ours;
A steady step that finds an inner rhythm,
A pilgrim’s eye that sees beyond the stars.
They did not know his name but still they sought him,
They came from otherwhere but still they found;
In temples they found those who sold and bought him,
But in the filthy stable, hallowed ground.
Their courage gives our questing hearts a voice
To seek, to find, to worship, to rejoice.

If you would like to encourage and support this blog, you might like, on occasion, (not every time of course!) to pop in and buy me a cup of coffee. Clicking on this banner will take you to a page where you can do so, if you wish. But please do not feel any obligation!

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2026/01/06/a-sonnet-for-epiphany-13/

http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/?p=9268

firstknownwhenlost_feed

Posted by Stephen Pentz

http://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-wind-in-pines.html

In this part of the world, the deciduous trees are empty, save for a few leaves fluttering drily on otherwise bare branches. Gone (at least for now) are the green days of whispering, soughing, and roaring boughs. Passing through a leafless grove on a windy day, one hears the empty branches clacking and clicking against one another high overhead. The trunks and large limbs creak and groan, like the masts of a sailing ship in a storm as described in a seafaring tale.

But, ah! -- the wind in the pines is always with us.

When the wind passes

in the pines, autumn already

seems lonely enough --

and then a fulling block echoes

through Tamakawa Village.

Minamoto no Toshiyori (1055-1129) (translated by Steven Carter), in Steven Carter (editor), Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford University Press 1991), page 136. The poem is a waka (as are the two poems which appear below). The sound of fulling blocks in the night signifies deep autumn in Japanese poetry (and in turn reflects the influence of Chinese poetry (in which the sound of fulling blocks on an autumn night is often heard) on Japanese poets). For more on fulling blocks in Japanese and Chinese poetry, please see an earlier post from 2021.

The continuity of Japanese poetry up until the 20th century is a wonderful thing. A beautiful poem (or an evocative, beautiful image or phrase within a poem) was never forgotten by poets or readers, and its echo might return years or centuries later in a new poem. The new poem did not identify the source of the echo. No footnotes were provided. Nor were they necessary. Everyone who read the poem, or heard it recited, recognized the echo. And thus the earlier poem's beauty was preserved, renewed, and brought into a new world. A long string of resonating echoes developed. Nothing was lost to Time, or left behind. Imagine that.

I come so seldom,

and yet how sad in the night

sounds the wind in the pines.

And she, there beneath the moss --

does she too hear it, endlessly?

Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114-1204) (translated by Steven Carter), Ibid, page 153. The occasion for the writing of the poem was Fujiwara no Shunzei's visit to the grave of his wife. He spent the night at a nearby Buddhist temple. Ibid, page 153.

Saigyō, a friend of Fujiwara no Shunzei, and a reclusive dweller in the countryside for much of his life, wrote this:

Mountain village

where wind makes sad noises

in the pines --

and adding to the loneliness,

the cry of an evening cicada.

Saigyō (1118-1190) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson (editor), Saigyō: Poems of a Mountain Home (Columbia University Press 1991), page 146. The sound of cicadas (or, alternatively, crickets) in the twilight of late summer or early autumn provides another memorable series of lovely echoes in Japanese poetry. But that requires a post of its own, at another time. As does the cry of quail at evening in the deep grass.

Paul Nash (1889-1946), "Berkshire Downs" (1922)

Of course, I am not suggesting that Japanese poets alone are sensitive to the allure (be it melancholic or soothing) of the wind in the pines. For instance, quite some time ago I discovered this poem in The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, which was compiled in 1912 by the redoubtable Arthur Quiller-Couch:

Dirge in Woods

A wind sways the pines,

And below

Not a breath of wild air;

Still as the mosses that glow

On the flooring and over the lines

Of the roots here and there.

The pine-tree drops its dead;

They are quiet, as under the sea.

Overhead, overhead

Rushes life in a race,

As the clouds the clouds chase;

And we go,

And we drop like the fruits of the tree,

Even we,

Even so.

George Meredith, in Arthur Quiller-Couch (editor), The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (Oxford University Press 1912), page 465. The poem was originally published in Meredith's A Reading of Earth (Macmillan 1888). One of those poems which, once read, is not forgotten. (An aside. I have Quiller-Couch's book beside me as I write this, and I notice that my copy bears a Tokyo bookstore's small decorative paper label on the inner flap of the dust-jacket. I often visited the bookstore during two extended stays in Tokyo in 1993 and 2000, and I purchased the book during one of those visits. How time passes. "Overhead, overhead/Rushes life in a race,/As the clouds the clouds chase.")

Meredith's poem captures wonderfully how it feels to stand or sit within a grove of pines. The stillness. The silence. The soft ground surrounding the trunks of the trees. The mull and duff. I remember "mull and duff" from Howard Nemerov's lovely poem "Again": "the nevergreen/Needles and mull and duff of the forest floor." (Howard Nemerov, The Western Approaches, Poems 1973-1975 (University of Chicago Press 1975), page 52. "Nevergreen" is a neologism of Nemerov's invention, it would appear.)

"A wind sways the pines." Reading Meredith's opening line, I cannot help but think of this:

The Region November

It is hard to hear the north wind again,

And to watch the treetops, as they sway.

They sway, deeply and loudly, in an effort,

So much less than feeling, so much less than speech,

Saying and saying, the way things say

On the level of that which is not yet knowledge:

A revelation not yet intended.

It is like a critic of God, the world

And human nature, pensively seated

On the waste throne of his own wilderness.

Deeplier, deeplier, loudlier, loudlier,

The trees are swaying, swaying, swaying.

Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose (The Library of America 1997), page 472. "The Region November" was not published during Stevens' lifetime. It was likely written in 1954, the year prior to his death. (Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous (edited by Milton Bates) (Alfred A. Knopf 1989), page 324.)

Pines are not specifically mentioned in "The Region November," but the "swaying, swaying, swaying" brings to mind the look of pines in the wind, at least for me. And, speaking of echoes of past poems, consider these lines from Stevens' "The Snow Man," published in Harmonium in 1923, thirty years before he wrote "The Region November": "One must have a mind of winter/To regard the frost and the boughs/Of the pine-trees crusted with snow . . . and not to think/Of any misery in the sound of the wind."

John Nash (1893-1977), "Autumn Berkshire" (1951)

The three waka from 11th and 12th century Japan and the poems by Meredith and Stevens suggest that hearing or seeing or feeling the wind in the pines is an occasion of pensive melancholy, with accompanying intimations of mortality. I suspect that many of us might agree. And yet . . .

Last week I came upon a group of busy, chattering sparrows flitting and hopping and pecking in the dry, leaning stalks of wild grass alongside a paved pathway. As I have noted here in the past, I have come to think of the sparrows (and also the robins) as my winter companions. I doubt if they regard me in that fashion. As I came nearer, the entire group flew several yards away onto the lower branches of a tall pine standing alone out in the meadow beside the pathway. They disappeared into the dark boughs, twittering and clucking. How warm, dry, and soft it must be within the depths of that pine. Calm, still, and quiet. Even when the wind blows. A place of shelter, refuge, and rest. Or do those enveloping boughs provide only a brief respite?

The wind in the pines. Over the centuries, the echoes continue in Japanese poetry.

A cool breeze;

The vault of heaven is filled

With the voices of pine trees.

Onitsura (1660-1738) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, A History of Haiku, Volume One (Hokuseido Press 1963), page 97.

And this:

One learns to bear solitude

from the sound of the pine-wind.

Shōhaku (1443-1527) (translated by Steven Carter), in Steven Carter (editor), Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology, page 319. This two-line verse appears as verse 64 in Minase Sangin Hyakuin ("Three Poets at Minase"), a hundred-verse renga written in 1488, with Shōhaku, Sōgi (1421-1502), and Sōchō (1448-1532) as the contributing poets. Ibid, pages 303-326.

And, finally, this:

Twilight -- the only conversation

on this hill

Is the wind blowing through the pines.

Ryōkan (1758-1831) (translated by John Stevens), in John Stevens (editor), One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryōkan (Weatherhill 1977), page 76. The poem is a waka.

This small gathering of poems about the wind in the pines is but a limited introduction, the product of my inadequate knowledge and memory. It also serves as an admonition to my sleepwalking self: Pay attention. Be grateful.

Christopher Nevinson (1889-1946)

"View of the Sussex Weald" (1927)

Postscript. The beautiful particulars of the World may lose their color, wither away. Change or vanish. But the World bestows compensations, dispensations, gifts. A sunset in the distant pines. No wind.

Winter Twilight (Discovery Park, Seattle)

"The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. Consider living creatures -- none lives so long as man. The May fly waits not for the evening, the summer cicada knows neither spring nor autumn. What a wonderfully unhurried feeling it is to live even a single year in perfect serenity! If that is not enough for you, you might live a thousand years and still feel it was but a single night's dream." Kenkō (1283-1350), Tsurezuregusa (Chapter 7), in Donald Keene (translator), Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō (Columbia University Press 1967), pages 7-8.

http://firstknownwhenlost.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-wind-in-pines.html

dark_kana posting in

1) I do love the snow. I only don't like to cycle or drive through it. Luckily hubby drove me to work and will pick me up later. And if there is still snow then, we're gonna have a snowball fight with our daughter *grins*

2) lots of colleagues at the office. Nice talking ^^

3) finished making my 2023 photo album! Going to work on 2024 this evening :D

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2026/01/06/the-divine-image-by-william-blake-11/

Posted by malcolmguite

http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/?p=9266

Image created by Linda Richardson after Matisse

For January 6th (the feast of epiphany) in my Anthology from Canterbury Press, Waiting on the Word, I have chosen to read, as the final poem in the collection The Divine Image by William Blake. The Feast of the Epiphany celebrates the visit of the magi to the Christ-child, and so the inclusion of the Gentiles in the Gospel story: and not simply the Gentiles in some generic way, but all the distinct races, cultures and religions of ‘the nations’, which is why the tradition of depicting the three kings as representing three different races is so helpful. On this Feast Day, it might seem obvious to choose one of the well-known poems that recall or describe that familiar scene: Eliot’s ‘The Journey of the Magi’, or Yeats’ poem ‘The Magi’. But I wanted in this final poem to move from the outward and visible picture which already adorns so many of the Christmas cards we will be taking down today, and as those outward images fade away, to come through poetry to the inward and spiritual truth which they proclaim. And that spiritual truth is that in the Incarnation Christ, in taking on human nature, takes on, becomes involved in, visits, redeems the whole of humanity, not just the chosen people to whose race and culture he belonged. And what is more, when the fullness of God comes to dwell in the fullness of Christ’s humanity, then that mysterious ‘image of God’ in which all humanity was made (Genesis 1:27) is at last restored. And we can see that the Light who so uniquely and particularly became the Christ-child at Bethlehem is also, as John’s Gospel clearly proclaims, ‘The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world’ (John 1:9). It seems to me that it is William Blake’s poem ‘The Divine Image’, rather than any specifically Christmas or Epiphany verse, that goes to the heart of these things.

You can hear me read this poem by clicking on the title or the play button. The image above was created by Linda Richardson, for the unique book of responses to Waiting on the Word last year, and again this is one of my favourites. As we finish this series of posts I would like to thank Linda for allowing me to share these beautiful images with you and for making such a rich and creative response to my book in the first instance. She will soon be establishing a website for more of her art and when she does so I will write about it on this blog. about this final image Linda writes:

Once again I return to Matisse and his dancers. The little figures are naked and in a trance of wild woodland worship. They are unselfconscious and free, not arguing a doctrinal point but holding tight to each others hands as they whirl around a Divine tree. Our minds and thinking can ensnare us like a flies on a spider’s web, but our bodies do not lie. If we are stressed, we can talk ourselves into believing we are relaxed, but our jaw may be tight and our brow heavy. In the same way we sometimes mistake ‘correct doctrine’ for love, and wonder why we feel so angry when our doctrines are attacked. In the image, the little figures are ‘every man’ and ‘every woman’. They are lost in the present moment, and the only government is the beauty of the silent tree around which, with all their hearts, they dance.

There exists only the present instant… a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence. Meister Eckhart

You can find the words, and a short reflective essay on this poem in Waiting on the Word, which is now also available on Kindle

The Divine ImageWilliam Blake

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

All pray in their distress;

And to these virtues of delight

Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is God, our father dear,

And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity a human face,

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,

That prays in his distress,

Prays to the human form divine,

Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,

In heathen, Turk, or Jew;

Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell

There God is dwelling too.

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2026/01/06/the-divine-image-by-william-blake-11/

http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/?p=9266

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/01/05/

Posted by Samuel Pepys

Up and to the Duke, who himself told me that Sir J. Lawson was come home to Portsmouth from the Streights, who is now come with great renown among all men, and, I perceive, mightily esteemed at Court by all. The Duke did not stay long in his chamber; but to the King’s chamber, whither by and by the Russia Embassadors come; who, it seems, have a custom that they will not come to have any treaty with our or any King’s Commissioners, but they will themselves see at the time the face of the King himself, be it forty days one after another; and so they did to-day only go in and see the King; and so out again to the Council-chamber.

The Duke returned to his chamber, and so to his closett, where Sir G. Carteret, Sir J. Minnes, Sir W. Batten, Mr. Coventry, and myself attended him about the business of the Navy; and after much discourse and pleasant talk he went away. And I took Sir W. Batten and Captain Allen into the wine cellar to my tenant (as I call him, Serjeant Dalton), and there drank a great deal of variety of wines, more than I have drunk at one time, or shall again a great while, when I come to return to my oaths, which I intend in a day or two. Thence to my Lord’s lodging, where Mr. Hunt and Mr. Creed dined with us, and were very merry. And after dinner he and I to White Hall, where the Duke and the Commissioners for Tangier met, but did not do much: my Lord Sandwich not being in town, nobody making it their business. So up, and Creed and I to my wife again, and after a game or two at cards, to the Cockpitt, where we saw “Claracilla,” a poor play, done by the King’s house (but neither the King nor Queen were there, but only the Duke and Duchess, who did show some impertinent and, methought, unnatural dalliances there, before the whole world, such as kissing, and leaning upon one another); but to my very little content, they not acting in any degree like the Duke’s people. So home (there being here this night Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Martha Batten of our office) to my Lord’s lodgings again, and to a game at cards, we three and Sarah, and so to supper and some apples and ale, and to bed with great pleasure, blessed be God!

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/01/05/

bruces_poems_feed

Posted by Bruce-the-Sheep

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2026/01/sweet-kisses-senryu-mario-odekerken.html

Sweet kisses linger,
laughter slips between soft breaths,
love steals the last word.

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2026/01/sweet-kisses-senryu-mario-odekerken.html

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/5/hug-your-bestie-today

Posted by Daily Otter

Via Shedd Aquarium

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/5/hug-your-bestie-today

studyhacks_feed

Posted by Study Hacks

https://calnewport.com/why-didnt-ai-join-the-workforce-in-2025/

https://calnewport.com/?p=16752

Exactly one year ago, Sam Altman made a bold prediction: “We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce’ and materially change the output of companies.” Soon after, OpenAI’s Chief Product Officer, Kevin Weil, elaborated on this claim when he stated in an interview that 2025 would be the year “that we go from ChatGPT being this super smart thing…to ChatGPT doing things in the real world for you.” He provided examples, such as filling out paperwork and booking hotel rooms. An Axios article covering Weil’s remarks provided a blunt summary: “2025 is the year of AI agents.”

These claims mattered. A chatbot can summarize text or directly answer questions, but in theory, an agent can tackle much more complicated tasks that require multiple steps and decisions along the way. When Altman talked about these systems joining the workforce, he meant it. He envisioned a world in which you assign projects to an agent in the same way you might to a human employee. The often-predicted future in which AI dominates our lives requires something like agent technology to be realized.

The industry had reason to be optimistic that 2025 would prove pivotal. In previous years, AI agents like Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex had become impressively adept at tackling multi-step computer programming problems. It seemed natural that this same skill might easily generalize to other types of tasks. Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, became so enthusiastic about these possibilities that early in 2025, he claimed that AI agents would imminently unleash a “digital labor revolution” worth trillions of dollars.

But here’s the thing: none of that ended up happening.

As I report in my most recent New Yorker article, titled “Why A.I. Didn’t Transform Our Lives in 2025,” AI agents failed to live up to their hype. We didn’t end up with the equivalent of Claude Code or Codex for other types of work. And the products that were released, such as ChatGPT Agent, fell laughably short of being ready to take over major parts of our jobs. (In one example I cite in my article, ChatGPT Agent spends fourteen minutes futilely trying to select a value from a drop-down menu on a real estate website.)

Silicon Valley skeptic Gary Marcus told me that the underlying technology powering these agents – the same large language models used by chatbots – would never be capable of delivering on these promises. “They’re building clumsy tools on top of clumsy tools,” he said. OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy implicitly agreed when he said, during a recent appearance on the Dwarkesh Podcast, that there had been “overpredictions going on in the industry,” before then adding: “In my mind, this is really a lot more accurately described as the Decade of the Agent.”

Which is all to say, we actually don’t know how to build the digital employees that we were told would start arriving in 2025.

To find out more about why 2025 failed to become the Year of the AI Agent, I recommend reading my full New Yorker piece. But for now, I want to emphasize a broader point: I’m hoping 2026 will be the year we stop caring about what people believe AI might do, and instead start reacting to its real, present capabilities.

For example, last week, Sal Khan wrote a New York Times op-ed in which he said, “I believe artificial intelligence will displace workers at a scale many people don’t yet realize.” The standard reaction would be to fret about this scary possibility. But what if we instead responded: says who? The actual examples Khan provides, which include someone telling him that A.I. agents are “capable” of replacing 80% of his call center employees, or Waymo’s incredibly slow and costly process of hand-mapping cities to deploy self-driving cars, are hardly harbingers of general economic devastation.

So, this is how I’m thinking about AI in 2026. Enough of the predictions. I’m done reacting to hypotheticals propped up by vibes. The impacts of the technologies that already exist are already more than enough to concern us for now…

The post Why Didn’t AI “Join the Workforce” in 2025? appeared first on Cal Newport.

https://calnewport.com/why-didnt-ai-join-the-workforce-in-2025/

https://calnewport.com/?p=16752

dark_kana posting in

1) slept well :-)

2) delicious tea and home made soup to warm up a little

3) I'm doing a great job working on my photo albums *grins*

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2026/01/05/rocky-mountain-railroad-epiphany-by-luci-shaw-11/

Posted by malcolmguite

http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/?p=9264

Image by Linda Richardson

For January 5th in my Anthology from Canterbury Press, Waiting on the Word, I have chosen to read Rocky Mountain Railroad, Epiphany by Luci Shaw. this poem makes an interesting contrast and parallel with Coleridge’s psalm-like outpouring of yesterday. Both poems are a response to the beauty of nature, and specifically to the sight of snowy mountains, and the whole play of light on snow and ice. In both poems we have a sense of glory and of the sublime rising ‘reaches of peak above peak beyond peak’.

You can hear me read this poem by clicking on the title or the play button. The image above was created by Linda Richardson. She Writes:

Luci Shaw takes a subtly different approach to Coleridge as she describes, ‘in a net of words’, her transcendent experience. She uses herself as a mirror to describe the effect the experience has on her. ‘I imbed it in my brain so that it will flash and flash again…an alternate reality…my open window mind is too little,…I long for each sweep….’

In the image I made, the words open and condense in the lines, sometimes clear, sometimes hidden in the ink, indicating the fleeting glimpses we see as we hurtle along in a train. Life reflects the train journey. The Divine is always around us, sometimes clearly visible in love given and received, sometimes only glimpsed as we speed by. And often, if our focus is too close, all we see is our own reflection in the window.

You can find the words, and a short reflective essay on this poem in Waiting on the Word, which is now also available on Kindle

Rocky Mountain Railroad, Epiphany Luci Shaw

The steel rails parallel the river as we penetrate

ranges of pleated slopes and crests—all too complicated

for capture in a net of words. In this showing, the train window

is a lens for an alternate reality—the sky lifts and the light forms

shadows of unstudied intricacy. The multiple colors of snow

in the dimpled fresh fall. Boulders like white breasts. Edges

blunted with snow. My open-window mind is too little for

this landscape. I long for each sweep of view to toss off

a sliver, imbed it in my brain so that it will flash

and flash again its unrepeatable views. Inches. Angles.

Niches. Two eagles. A black crow. Skeletal twigs’ notched

chalices for snow. Reaches of peak above peak beyond peak

Next to the track the low sun burns the silver birches into

brass candles. And always the flow of the companion river’s

cord of silk links the valleys together with the probability

of continuing revelation. I mind-freeze for the future

this day’s worth of disclosure. Through the glass

the epiphanies reel me in, absorbed, enlightened.

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2026/01/05/rocky-mountain-railroad-epiphany-by-luci-shaw-11/

http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/?p=9264

ancalime8301

Much like last year, it rather feels this past year went by when I wasn't looking, lol. My general overview of life also remains the same: I participate regularly in board gaming events coordinated by a local group and held (when happening in person) at public library locations. I'm in orchestra still, and doing church choir, and maintaining regular phone calls with a couple of long-distance friends, plus hanging out at least once a month (usually) with my local friends on top of seeing Bro regularly, especially ... plus I did a fair amount of cross-stitch this past year, lol.

2025 intention successes:
-I read 12 books I own that I hadn't read yet. I finished 63 books total this year across a range of formats, with only one re-read, in a different format (audiobook this time). There was one book I opted to discontinue.
-I did some (most?) of the physical recipe upkeep I wanted to do [never mind that I did it just last weekend, lol]. I started transferring recipe posts from Tumblr to Dreamwidth, but have a lot still to do.
-I faithfully kept up with The Daily Question journal, with some occasions where I didn't do the day's question until the next day, but I still did them.
-I GOT A FREAKING PIANO. :D :D :D
-As I said above, I'm nailing it on the creative works generally. No fic, though.

Books I appreciated this year:
-Mutual Aid: Building solidarity during this crisis (and the next) --I heard about this book and asked my public library to buy it (they ended up buying multiple copies, because once it was in the system, a bunch of people put holds on it!). It's a lovely little pep-talk, combined with some basic information that I found helpful. And in finding that link, I see that there's an updated edition coming, ooh.
-the work of Becky Chambers is utterly delightful. I must have first heard about the Monk and Robot stories (A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy), but I also really enjoyed the Wayfarers stories (starts with A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet).
-I accidentally discovered (in my public library catalog) the Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman, and they're fun reads.

2026 Intentions

In the spirit of my weekend to do lists, where some things are going to get done regardless so I write them down in order to have something to cross off and other things have been listed for, um, a while, my intentions for the coming year include:

1. Read at least six of the books that I own but haven't read yet. I've had good success with this so let's keep the streak going.

2. Finish moving the recipe posts I have on Tumblr to the Dreamwidth account I created for that purpose.

3. Keep on trucking with The Daily Question: My 5-Year Spiritual Journal question-answering.

4. Post on DW at least once a month. (Let's see if it works this time... lol.)

5. Turn the completed cross-stitch projects I've accumulated into finished products.

That feels like enough, with the way life has been and will be this upcoming year (I have some work stuff that'll ramp up as the year progresses, for starters).

redbird

The skin on the tips of my fingers has been splitting again (as it does in winter even if I try to use enough lotion) and I discovered yesterday evening that my left middle finger and thumb both hurt to touch right now, which makes lifting even light-weight things painful or difficult. Fortunately I don't live alone, and Adrian ct up my salmon for me.

Today has been if anything worse. Mousing Ok, a few tasks are OK, I managed several PT exercises but it has been a hard day. Typing, including comments, is particularly bad.

Current Mood: crappy

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/01/04/

Posted by Samuel Pepys

(Lord’s day). Up and to church, where a lazy sermon, and so home to dinner to a good piece of powdered beef, but a little too salt. At dinner my wife did propound my having of my sister Pall at my house again to be her woman, since one we must have, hoping that in that quality possibly she may prove better than she did before, which I take very well of her, and will consider of it, it being a very great trouble to me that I should have a sister of so ill a nature, that I must be forced to spend money upon a stranger when it might better be upon her, if she were good for anything.

After dinner I and she walked, though it was dirty, to White Hall (in the way calling at the Wardrobe to see how Mr. Moore do, who is pretty well, but not cured yet), being much afeard of being seen by anybody, and was, I think, of Mr. Coventry, which so troubled me that I made her go before, and I ever after loitered behind. She to Mr. Hunt’s, and I to White Hall Chappell, and then up to walk up and down the house, which now I am well known there, I shall forbear to do, because I would not be thought a lazy body by Mr. Coventry and others by being seen, as I have lately been, to walk up and down doing nothing. So to Mr. Hunt’s, and there was most prettily and kindly entertained by him and her, who are two as good people as I hardly know any, and so neat and kind one to another. Here we staid late, and so to my Lord’s to bed.

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/01/04/

kaberett

Reading. ... I think I genuinely have mostly just been stubbornly catching up with Dreamwidth (at time of writing I am UP TO DATE). No, wait, I did also (via oursin) end up reading several articles about the contents of Oliver Sacks' papers and personal archive, most of which was not hugely surprising given the results of some of my previous digging, but which has resulted in me reaching the firm decision that I shan't be citing any of his examples that can't be extremely independently verified. (Thoughts about case histories for public consumption continue.) And finished one of the Periodicals I'd had sitting around, and gleefully dumped it in the recycling!

I acquired a new book (passingbuzzards flagged up that Craft Wars #2 Dead Hand Rule came out recently; apparently I've been hiding so comprehensively from my e-mail that I presumably have a Max Gladstone Newsletter languishing somewhere in there) but it is not yet on the ereader. (And downloaded a Toby Daye short from Patreon, but that's not going onto the ereader until I have stitched it into the giant whole-series single ebook). I now also have two books sitting around in Libby. So! Next up Vespertine, then Rooftoppers, then maybe I settle down with Index, A History of the and actually finish it? Since I am no longer focussing primarily on pain reading? Because...

Writing. ... the document is over 3000 words long. At the moment most of what I'm writing falls into one of two categories: structure/scaffolding, and Words I Will Definitely Be Deleting because they're currently extremely note-to-self and will require significant expansion. But there are paragraphs! And I've written a little every day so far this year (except today, which I will rectify before I put the laptop down)! (The bar for Tick This Off My List is a single word.)

Playing. As of a little earlier this evening I have All The Inkulinati Steam Achievements, admittedly by Alt+F4ing my way through the Master run (i.e. flouncing most times I was about to lose a fight) ABOUT WHICH I FEEL BAD but probably not bad enough to go back through and do it Properly.

We have also finished Monument Valley 3, we think, in that we have All The Achievements... but we were a bit confused by the way it just sort of... trailed off after completing the Hall of Memories. I am sort of anticipating a further expansion, I think?

Cooking. This evening I decided I was Sad and that we were going to have Pineapple Fried Rice. A had not previously experienced this, and was... perplexed. Also mulled apple juice, starting with apple-and-ginger and eventually adding apple-and-pear to the problem.

Eating. Highlight: Lebkuchen and mulled apple juice from a flask (well, insulated mug) at the obelisk near the square water. Have also been Greatly Indulged with avocados, and enjoying them enormously.

Exploring. Visited the square water! Which was frozen, at least at the surface! There were excellent frost patterns on moss and also shelf fungi! Several of the trees had been decorated! Excellent stonk, v pleased. Earlier in the week we did a shorter stonk (... it now occurs to me that this is probably a family-specific usage...) around some of the back roads and enjoyed Ongoing Illuminations.

Making & mending. I have fixed Adam's glove????????? I have now made approximately nine tenths of a glove for Adam?????????? I need to actually do the thumb, but after giving up on the mitten flap in disgust after winding up ripping it back Multiple Times, this time around I ripped it back even further and then Grimly and Obsessively Counted, and... it worked??? (Promptly had to frog the bind-off as well, though, having forgotten a key instruction; I checked my notebook and was dismayed to find no notes on the obvious solution there, until I triple-checked the pattern and discovered that that would be because the obvious solution is literally a part of said written pattern...) Maybe I'll get the other one done in time for April (and before they've spent a year on the needles). Maybe.

Growing. CAN CONFIRM: MYSTERIOUS YELLOW HABANERO IS TRINIDAD PERFUME. Curry leaf cutting not dead yet. Have utterly failed to get any seeds sown this week despite Best Intentions but I have at least made the propagator more approachable, and ordered minimal Bonus Seeds (and indeed opted out of bonus bonus seeds altogether, good job me).

Observing. Robins, on my bike and at the square water. Corvids misc. Several excellent sunsets! And the almost-full moon framed perfectly in the not-exactly-an-alley the building front door disgorges into the middle of, which I made A go back outside to take a look at when they got home from work on Friday.

jazzyjj posting in

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2026/01/quietly-my-wife-toivo-lyy.html

wychwood

I moved all the shelves around in the spare CD rack and have turned it into a dedicated shrine to Sir David Attenborough *g*. My entire Attenborough DVD collection in one place, except for my Christmas present of "Asia" (currently by my bed because I'm watching it).

It snowed on Thursday night; about a centimetre lying everywhere when I went out at half six on Friday morning, and about half of that had melted by the time I left the pool to go up to the office, but most of that is still lying now. I had very little trouble getting in, but it sounds like most of my colleagues struggled; my oldest colleague broke her shoulder very badly ice-skating a few years ago (was off work for months) and she's really nervous about ice now - she'd clearly freaked herself out quite badly by the time she got in on Friday. I did look at the trampled and half-melted station car park on my way home and think "this is going to be lethal once it refreezes" but the round trip to church on Saturday was fine. And the bus driver saw me coming and waited as I "ran" for the bus (half the pavement was clear, but I was tiptoeing very carefully over the other half...).

It's mostly stayed below freezing, occasional spikes up to 1 or 2C. And more snow due tonight, although the forecast is no longer saying "bits of snow every day for the next week", and it's going to get warm enough (four or five whole degrees!!!) that it ought to melt by midweek.

First day back at work was noisier than I expected; there were half-a-dozen people in on my team, although we were the only ones on the whole floor! The one manager who was in brought a giant tin of fancy M&S biscuits, on the basis that if we all had to be in we deserved something nice. Monday will be back to full normality, though. I'm consoling myself with the fact that I have a day off later this month; I'm going to a Thursday night concert (Mahler 1), and decided to treat myself to not having to get up at six the next morning!

bruces_poems_feed

Posted by Bruce-the-Sheep

Quietly my wife
breaths beside me,

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2026/01/quietly-my-wife-toivo-lyy.html

lhune posting in

1) A little lie-in this morning

2) Dinner at my parents’s place

3) I’ve finally decided which VPN to buy and I was just in time to get a discount for my rail pas this year

jazzyjj posting in

cmcmck

The forecast was for snow later this afternoon but it has already hit us!

( More pics )

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: Brrrsville

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/4/yeahhh-theyll-smell-me-now

Posted by Daily Otter

Via MTSOfan, who writes, “Otters are very much like mink. They have a lot of energy, and they communicate through scent. Here, Luani rubs his head on a rock in his habitat.”

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/4/yeahhh-theyll-smell-me-now

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2026/01/04/hymn-before-sunrise-by-st-coleridge-11/

Posted by malcolmguite

http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/?p=9262

For January 4th in my Anthology from Canterbury Press, Waiting on the Word, I have chosen to read a passage from A Hymn before Sunrise in the vale of Chamouni by ST Coleridge.

You can hear me read this poem by clicking on the title or the play button. The image above was created by Linda Richardson for her book of responses to Waiting on the Word, she writes:

Anyone who has ever had a “glance” of God wants to share the experience. It is like running home to show your family the beautiful butterfly you have captured in your cupped hands but when you get there it has escaped and all you have are impressions and words. In the gospel of John we hear Andrew’s response after he meets Jesus: “The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.”

Words and images have power to point to an experience but they aren’t the experience itself. What we really want to do is bring people to experience what we have experienced, to bring them to Jesus like Andrew brought his brother, (to bring them to the Holy Mountain). In my little painting, the mountain sits above the words, the words point to the mountain. God’s promise is that if we seek, we will find. Talking about God is good but if we don’t also open ourselves to be transformed by the experience of God, (Rise, O ever rise..), we remain in doctrine and dogma which, although essential, only has the power to point.

You can find the words, and a short reflective essay on this poem in Waiting on the Word, which is now also available on Kindle

from The Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain’s brow

Adown enormous ravines slope amain—

Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,

And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!

Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven

Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun

Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers

Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?—

God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,

Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!

God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!

Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!

And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,

And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!

Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle’s nest!

Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm!

Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!

Ye signs and wonders of the element!

Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,

Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,

Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene

Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast—

Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou

That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low

In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,

Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,

To rise before me—Rise, O ever rise,

Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!

Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,

Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,

Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,

And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,

Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2026/01/04/hymn-before-sunrise-by-st-coleridge-11/

http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/?p=9262

yam

It's my annual celebration of Remembering I Have A Blog! It's a far cry from the heady livejournal days where you could be assured of hearing my every passing thought or at least seeing all my blurry photos of flowers, but such are the times.

So, top of the mental list currently is my broken laundry machine. It's like 20 years old so I can't really even fault it, it was cheap to begin with, was in a rental unit with a landlord who didn't give a shit for a lot of that time, and honestly has earned its retirement. But predictable or not I sure don't have any money to replace it, so I'm doing the crowdfunding thing, because I really, really want clean socks and my nigerian prince is not returning my calls.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/dear-internet-please-do-my-laundry

In my wildest dreams I can get together enough money for a machine I can use by myself, which was not the case with the current one, but honestly I'll still be overjoyed if I can just get a new version of the Cheapest Thing In The Store, because again, clean socks. And towels. And not having to figure out how to take a full laundry hamper on the bus in a wheelchair to get to a laundromat. The two closest ones have big stairs at the entrance anyway, a hazard of living in New Westminster, which is not flat. But also sitting in a laundromat sounds like migraine hell. ANYWAY ANYWAY I don't know why I'm going on about why I want to be able to do laundry, like, you know why.

======

But that's this weekend, and it's been a year! What's new?

- I moved! Not far, I ended up buying a place about five blocks from my old place. But it has TWO ELEVATORS and they are quite reliable so far. Also it's a single block from the skytrain, which is somehow like an order of magnitude more convenient than being four blocks from the skytrain. It's on a busy street so it's a bit noisier and the police seem to need to sit outside with strobe lights going every single night, but nothing blackout curtains and pretending the cars are the ocean can't deal with. It's smaller - a one-bedroom instead of two. Greg has the bedroom and I'm out in the living room, and the furniture arrangement sort of says "dollar store that won't pass a fire code inspection" but it works. Also hilariously my cousin lives here, and in the last year of living here I've run into him once. I mean I've seen him more than that because of family dinners, but I am amused by how living in the same building has not affected things at all.

- I have my new wheelchair! I kind of forgot that that was just this year, it feels like I've had it forever, and it's so, so good you guys. It eats hills for breakfast, the battery life is great, and it's so much faster. I still use my old chair for trips to Salt Spring to see pals, or rare occasions when a car trip is the only way to get somewhere, and when I do I realize how spoiled I am, because now the old chair feels soooo slow, and when I got it I remember finding the speed overwhelming a bit. Grateful for both of 'em and glad I got the foldy one first, both because I would never have convinced the ministry to pay for the better one without it, and because if this one develops any problems, I have a backup to use. Wheelchair repairs through the ministry notoriously take weeks in BC, so that's some big time peace of mind that I won't be stranded at home if I need to navigate that. It's weird to think that two years ago I _was_ stranded at home, basically all the time, except for a few excursions for medical appointments that would put me in bed in pain for days afterward. Wheelchair life is so, so much better.

- Greg just turned 15! He's 5'11" now and still as sweet and cuddly as he was as a toddler and still demands that I read him a bedtime story every night. (Which is a couple chapters of a grisly urban fantasy series usually. I would pretend that was an artifact of his age, but nah, he got grisly YA murder mysteries from Tamora Pierce when he was much younger, children are just bloodthirsty in general.) He is so thoughtful and conscientious and I'm so proud of the man he's growing up to be.

- My cats are still cats. Sammy is disturbed by the view from our new apartment; he can see birds now and he is NOT OKAY with the existence of birds. I'm not sure how this wasn't an issue at our old place, but now he keeps mewling disconsolately at them and looking at me like "Uh, fix this?" Ladybug is undismayed by anything, as usual, and spends her day getting me, any visitors, and any inanimate objects she can reach to pet her.

- I'm on a super-strict keto diet for my liver condition and annoyingly it's working really, really well. My lab numbers immediately dropped to 75% of their alarming height. I say annoying because now I have to keep doing it. I miss candy! I'm getting not bad at making keto bread in the breadmaker, though, so at least Cheez Whiz and pickle sandwiches are here to console me. Which is the weirdest health food ever, but hey, it works. Super strict = 20g of carbs a day or less, which would not actually be /that/ hard except I spend most of it on my daily 1/3 of a pudding cup to take my meds in. I've tried the no sugar added ones and they are just so much worse at disguising the taste of the bitter meds, so oh well. There is a lot of heavy cream and lunch meat in my life right now. Why eating a ton of fat is making my fatty liver improve I do not know, but I can't pretend to understand even a tenth of what livers get up to, and honestly I think that is true of most hepatologists as well. Livers: they are up to some SHIT.

- Recently enjoyed Wake Up Dead Man, and watching the two previous movies again. Rian Johnson is just so good at capturing up to the minute assholes, and Daniel Craig is SO GOOD as CSI KFC. I saw Sneakers for the first time this year, and immediately watched it again twice, dang, that was not oversold to me. Also I watched Pacific Rim about 25 times. Giant robot comfort food, what can I say.

- Steam tells me I spent most of my game time on Stardew Valley, again. Comfort food, again, ayup. I have, jeez, 8000 hours of playtime now? But the mod community is so active that it's really a new game every time, along with also being the same game every time. It's a pretty great combination. But anyhoo. Also really enjoyed Blue Prince, Balatro, and especially Dave the Diver, which I 100%ed and then immediately 100%ed again, like, back to back, I just loved it so hard. I'll probably 100% it again later this year when the new jungle expansion comes out. I can't remember if this year was when I started them or not, but also really enjoyed all of the Mosaic series by Mark Ffrench. It's a minesweeper-like puzzle at the core, but each section you solve unlocks some interesting little factoid, so it combines the addictiveness of minesweeper with the addictiveness of going down a wikipedia rabbithole. The tone of the games varies a LOT, from pleasantly benign and amusing (Proverbs) to really depressing (Mosaic Retrospective: 2024, which recaps events of the year and yikes what a year) to grisly (the latest, Mosaic of the Strange, which is an X-files homage) to educational (Mosaic of the Pharaohs,) just in the choice of the genre of factoids you get. I replayed Witcher 3, again, several times, but also this year tried out the Witcher 1 and 2, now that they have mac ports. Witcher 1 was a little painful to play, the interface is brutal, but it has the same voice actors and the same writers, so it was still very worthwhile, damn, they are good at this. Witcher 2 was very much like Witcher 3, just with the plot a little more on rails, and I really enjoyed playing it through twice to see both main pathways. I did some play-testing for the upcoming TR-49, which I highly recommend. You're manipulating reality on a fictional enigma-esque device from Bletchley park using leet-speak. So basically like all Inkle games, impossible to describe but very engrossing.

- Okay I'm running out of steam, I'll probably think of six other things to talk about as soon as I hit post and then forget to post them and see you next year? Or next week, maybe I'll pop on to brag about my new laundry set-up, because holy shit, in the time it took me to post this I'm half-way funded. WHAT THE HECK.

Ahem. If anyone needs me I'll be crying into a cheez whiz sandwich because people are very, very kind. <3

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/01/03/

Posted by Samuel Pepys

Up and to the office all the morning, and dined alone with my wife at noon, and then to my office all the afternoon till night, putting business in order with great content in my mind. Having nothing now in my mind of trouble in the world, but quite the contrary, much joy, except only the ending of our difference with my uncle Thomas, and the getting of the bills well over for my building of my house here, which however are as small and less than any of the others. Sir W. Pen it seems is fallen very ill again.

So to my arithmetique again to-night, and so home to supper and to bed.

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/01/03/

kaberett

This afternoon I have, I think (I hope I have my fingers crossed) got unstuck on the pair of mittens I'm making for A, having frogged the palm yet again; I have been having inordinate difficulty with successfully picking up slipped stitch columns consistently so as to wind up with the flap not at a ridiculous slope. I don't know why I've been finding this so hard (it was fine on the previous pair!), and I am not super thrilled with the neatness (or otherwise) of how the picking up has gone, but I'm now most of the way to done with this one, please the gods may it continue thus.

A meanwhile spent the afternoon cleaning fountain pens, and was willing to do one of mine while I was at it, so the dip-fill that got done when the nib was reground has now been cleaned out and TOMORROW I can fill it with Its Intended Ink and THEN I will... get to see how much I hate the intended combination of colours, heh. (I am contemplating doing some inline journalling, with slightly different colours of ink for todo lists vs Recountings Of Feelings About Day.)

I am also pretty much caught up with Dreamwidth, by which I mean "I haven't finished reading all of today's posts, and I'm probably not going to before I sleep, but I am, like, at one day behind now", which is a joy. Along the way I have discovered that a new Craft Wars book got published while I was hiding from my many (many) e-mails; been baffled that uk.bookshop.org just... doesn't sell English-language Max Gladstone ebooks, as far as I can tell; and made slow progress on remembering that commenting is a good thing now, actually. (I've been leery of it while Significantly Behind in case Things Had Gone Bad in the interim, but I've been significantly behind since April, so I have some relearning to do.)

What else what else? Snow, a smattering thereof, or possibly just Very Enthusiastic Frost; finally managed to point out the octopus topper on one of the localish post boxes in such a fashion that A was able to observe it; there is a fresh batch of yoghurt to go in the fridge overnight and then get decanted in the morning; I have not today managed to sow the various grow-on-indoors seeds I want to get started in the propagator before it's time for Everything Else (pineapple physalis, lemongrass, ... oh no what's the third thing) but, hey, Perhaps Tomorrow. Many things. For now: rest.

rydra_wong

Because I happen to have a bit of RL knowledge and pulled this list together in a comment elsewhere.

In no order, and this is in no way intended to be comprehensive (if you've got other suggestions, please add them in the comments), but these are groups who I know are doing good work:

TransActual -- they've been taking the lead on campaigning after the Supreme Court ruling and are extremely on the ball: https://transactual.org.uk/

Gendered Intelligence -- support primarily focused on children and young people (up to 25), doing lifesaving work as so many trans kids and teens in the UK are really suffering right now, with the puberty blockers ban and also the overwhelming sense that the entire country hates them: https://genderedintelligence.co.uk/

The Trans Legal Clinic -- new organization providing free legal help for trans people in the UK; I know someone doing third-sector work who's met them and was incredibly impressed by them: https://www.translegalclinic.com

The Trans Safety Network -- a tiny group of people doing formidable investigative work: https://transsafety.network/

The Trans+ Solidarity Alliance -- impressively-organized political lobbying and briefing of MPs, again I think being done by a tiny group of people: https://www.transsolidarityalliance.com/

Not trans-led or trans-specific (unlike all the others I've linked), but the Good Law Project are fighting a bunch of the key legal cases at the moment: https://goodlawproject.org

They're much bigger and better-funded, though, so you might wish to send donations to the smaller groups for whom it'll make a lot more difference.

Also, if you're thinking of donating, some of these are legally charities (e.g. Gendered Intelligence) and some aren't because they're too "political" and are thus registered as CICs or suchlike (this is just relevant in terms of being able to use Gift Aid etc.).

Trans+ Solidarity Alliance and TransActual also have good info and advice on emailing your MP (including template letters), if you have the time/spoons free at some point.

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2026/01/03/courtesy-by-hilaire-belloc-11/

Posted by malcolmguite

http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/?p=9260

For January 3rd in my Anthology from Canterbury Press, Waiting on the Word, I have chosen to read Courtesy by Hilaire Belloc. I have chosen it for this run-up towards Epiphany because it is essentially a series of little epiphanies, or ‘showings’; in each of the three pictures themselves pictures of moments of ‘epiphanies’ or ‘showings forth’ of the glory of God in scripture.

You can hear me read this poem by clicking on the title or the play button. The image above was created by Linda Richardson. She writes:

The poem we consider today is about ‘courtesy’, not a word that we attribute easily these days except if we are complaining that someone lacks ‘common courtesy’. As I reflected on this poem I was taken back to my childhood when I was at a convent boarding school. I loved going to the convent chapel and kneeling to pray. I remember thinking how inadequate I was to do this, unlike the professional nuns whose prayers I considered far more powerful than my own mute and rather unhappy attempts.

I have since learned that God will inhabit the tiniest space we make for Him. Even our most feeble turning towards Him will make the angels of heaven hold their breath in excitement. Recently I read the words of a Rabbi who said, when the child of God walks down the road a thousand angels go before her crying, ‘Make way for the image of God!’

You can find the words, and a short reflective essay on this poem in Waiting on the Word, which is now also available on Kindle

Courtesy Hilaire Belloc

Of Courtesy, it is much less

Than Courage of Heart or Holiness,

Yet in my Walks it seems to me

That the Grace of God is in Courtesy.

On Monks I did in Storrington fall,

They took me straight into their Hall;

I saw Three Pictures on a wall,

And Courtesy was in them all.

The first the Annunciation;

The second the Visitation;

The third the Consolation,

Of God that was Our Lady’s Son.

The first was of St. Gabriel;

On Wings a-flame from Heaven he fell;

And as he went upon one knee

He shone with Heavenly Courtesy.

Our Lady out of Nazareth rode –

It was Her month of heavy load;

Yet was her face both great and kind,

For Courtesy was in Her Mind.

The third it was our Little Lord,

Whom all the Kings in arms adored;

He was so small you could not see

His large intent of Courtesy.

Our Lord, that was Our Lady’s Son,

Go bless you, People, one by one;

My Rhyme is written, my work is done.

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2026/01/03/courtesy-by-hilaire-belloc-11/

http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/?p=9260

nanila posting in

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/3/ive-never-seen-such-a-funny-looking-otter-and-what-is-that-contraption

Posted by Daily Otter

Via Jeff Flinn

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/3/ive-never-seen-such-a-funny-looking-otter-and-what-is-that-contraption

wychwood

I have a bunch of game codes going spare for anyone who wants them! We don't have to be mutuals or anything, and feel free to pass them along to other friends etc. Please take them! Some of these games are great, but I can't play two copies.
( list of games )

lhune posting in

https://skillcult.com/blog/2026/1/2/call-for-my-old-potato-onion-and-shallot-stock

1) I woke up this morning to a winter wonderland. The first snow this year, actually the first snow this season

2) I’m making soup for lunch (and some more the coming days)

3) I love the central heating now, I’m reading with my feet on the radiators ^_^

ysabetwordsmith posting in

crowdfunding

What are your planned crowdfunding projects for January? What did you accomplish during December?

The January

crowdfunding Creative Jam will run Saturday 17-Sunday 18 with a theme of "Memories." This will be our 150th session, wow! Spread the news to all your creative friends and invite them to join us.

crowdfunding was created on September 9, 2010. Thank you all for sharing in this adventure!

Comments Received: 10,841
Journal Entries: 3,878
Tags: 89
Memories: 11
Icons Uploaded: 3

Interests: 52
Members: 225
Subscribers: 228

Current Mood: busy

skillcult_feed

Posted by Steven Edholm

I’m a little late on this, but I am looking for some of my old potato onion and seeds blum shallot stock, which I’ve lost. Many years ago now, during an especially challenging time, gophers gradually finished off the last of my stock of these two gems. I used to sell them every year on ebay, so I sent out a lot. I can probably get the same yellow potato onion again by careful shopping, but I would much rather get some of my own stock directly back, so I know I’m getting the same thing. I’m hoping that someone out there still grows them and I can buy or trade for some bulbs to get them going again.

Both of these are excellent perennial onions. I don’t really like top setting onions. They are small and hard to process. They Yellow Potato Onion and pink Blum Shallot are both bolt resistant and good growers.

The potato onions have. a long history and good reputation. They are also very good eating. I love grilling them whole. Once they are well cooked, you just squeeze them and the meat pops out out. They are also great peeled and cooked whole with roasts or in stews. Cutting them up for dicing and slicing is a bit tedious, but I use them that way a lot too.

The shallot, which I ordered originally as Seeds Blum Pink Shallot, is an even better keeper and culturally a true old school shallot. If you get shallots from the store now, they are likely not a traditional shallot. The old school shallots were a perennial multiplier onion propagated by saving bulbs to plant. They resist going to flower. Most shallots not commercially grown, are grown from seed individually, just as you would grow any onion or scallion. They bolt when replanted as individual bulbs, creating a seed head, all though they will still divide.

If anyone has either one of these and can spare a few this season or next, please contact me. I till get inquiries every year from people who want to buy potato onions and cannot find them or can’t be sure of what they are getting. There are many sources and some are outright scams. I’d like to be able to provide them again at some point. I am also still interested in doing a little breeding with perennial onions like this, both crossing them with other multipliers and with large bulbing onions.

I have quite a few blog posts on potato onions. I think this link will work… https://skillcult.com/blog/tag/potato+onions

Here is my video series on potato onions: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL60FnyEY-eJBDhVK5y8Qs7XRHIFmuzeFl also embedded below.

A traditional time to plant potato onions is on or just after the winter solstice, which is past, but not by far.

https://skillcult.com/blog/2026/1/2/call-for-my-old-potato-onion-and-shallot-stock

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/01/02/

Posted by Samuel Pepys

Lay long in bed, and so up and to the office, where all the morning alone doing something or another. So dined at home with my wife, and in the afternoon to the Treasury office, where Sir W. Batten was paying off tickets, but so simply and arbitrarily, upon a dull pretence of doing right to the King, though to the wrong of poor people (when I know there is no man that means the King less right than he, or would trouble himself less about it, but only that he sees me stir, and so he would appear doing something, though to little purpose), that I was weary of it. At last we broke up, and walk home together, and I to see Sir W. Pen, who is fallen sick again. I staid a while talking with him, and so to my office, practising some arithmetique, and so home to supper and bed, having sat up late talking to my poor wife with great content.

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/01/02/

choco_frosh

CoViD Levels:
Huh. We actually have up-to-date information. (As of Monday.) And CoViD levels (at least for the North System) are still at ... (drumroll, please)...about 300 Bobcat-Robots.

(Levels for the Boston SOUTH system are up, to around 600 Bobcat-Robots. Which is still way below last year's levels.)

siderea

Interesting:

2025 Dec 31: DwarkeshPatel YT fea. Sarah Paine: Human Rights Killed Communism - Sarah Paine:

Watch on YouTube

BTW, that's Sarah C. M. Paine, until very recently the William S. Sims University Professor of History and Grand Strategy and the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History, both, at the US Naval War College. She's an incredibly interesting speaker. Recommended.

(Dwarkesh Patel is this random dude who mistakenly thinks he's a podcaster and keeps trying to have other guests, but in actuality was put on Earth to bring Paine to the masses. He's got something like 14 hours of her up on his channel.)

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/2/floating-into-the-new-year-like

Posted by Daily Otter

Via Buttonwood Park Zoo

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2026/1/2/floating-into-the-new-year-like

cmcmck

There was snow overnight. Just a couple of inches which wasn't forecast.

It is forecast for the next few days, however.

It clearly caught the council out as no gritting has been done.

A few pics from the house first thing:

And from the back:

I notice a few new people from LJ have asked me to friend. Can I please ask that you read my intro post at the top of my blog and if you're cool with what you find there, I'll open up for you. I keep things f-locked apart from my photos for privacy reasons but am always happy to meet new people and I do have good translation software if you aren't happy in English.

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: ici

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2026/01/02/the-bird-in-the-tree-ruth-pitter-11/

Posted by malcolmguite

http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/?p=9258

Image by Linda Richardson

For January 2nd in my Anthology from Canterbury Press, Waiting on the Word, I have chosen to read The Bird in the Tree by Ruth Pitter. On New Year’s Eve we considered Hardy’s almost reluctant glimpse of transfiguration ‘when Frost was spectre-grey, and ‘shrunken hard and dry’, and Hardy’s heart, bleak as the world through which he moves, nevertheless hears for a moment the ‘ecstatic sound’ of his darkling thrush. And even though he wanted to end his poem with the word ‘unaware’, something of the transcended has ‘trembled through’ his poem. Today’s poem, also about hearing a bird in a tree, also addresses the question of how the transcendent might for ‘a moment of time’ ‘tremble through’ into the immanent.

You can hear me read this poem by clicking on the title or the play button. The image above was created by Linda Richardson and is one of my favourites from the beautiful book of responses she made to Waiting on the Word, it is so full of life, movement and energy. Linda Writes:

A few years ago I was walking up the hill behind our house. I had an extraordinary experience of feeling myself dissolve into the land around me, of being one with the trees, the insects below the earth and the sky above me. When I got home I attempted to paint the experience and reading Ruth Pitter’s poem brought it back to my mind.

Throughout this Advent, Malcolm has offered us poems that invite us to ‘see’. We believe we know what a bird is like, what a tree is like, we have heard the Christmas stories so often that we think we know them, but if we give ourselves time to ‘see’ anew, we will be able to glimpse eternity shining all around us and within us. We can find God manifest in the finite and the infinite, in time and eternity. In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, ‘split the wood, and I am there. Turn over the stone and there you will find me.’

You can find the words, and a short reflective essay on this poem in Waiting on the Word, which is now also available on Kindle

The Bird in the Tree Ruth Pitter

The tree, and its haunting bird,

Are the loves of my heart;

But where is the word, the word,

Oh where is the art,

To say, or even to see,

For a moment of time,

What the Tree and the Bird must be

In the true sublime?

They shine, listening to the soul,

And the soul replies;

But the inner love is not whole,

and the moment dies.

Oh give me before I die

The grace to see

With eternal, ultimate eye,

The Bird and the Tree.

The song in the living Green,

The Tree and the Bird –

Oh have they ever been seen,

Ever been heard?

https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2026/01/02/the-bird-in-the-tree-ruth-pitter-11/

http://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/?p=9258

dark_kana posting in

1) a day off from work, a day for myself ^^ Hubby does have to work and our daughter is with her granddad

2) going for a drink with my mum and perhaps my sister

3) library visit and when I'm back home, working on my photobalbums

nanila posting in