rowyn

These 773,000-year-old fossils may reveal our shared human ancestor

Exceptionally well-dated fossils from Morocco capture a moment nearly 800,000 years ago, right at a major turning point in Earth’s magnetic history.

Fossils from a Moroccan cave have been dated with remarkable accuracy to about 773,000 years ago, thanks to a magnetic signature locked into the surrounding sediments. The hominin remains show a blend of ancient and more modern features, placing them near a pivotal branching point in human evolution. These individuals likely represent an African population close to the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neandertals, and Denisovans.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is sunny and cold. Much of the snow has melted.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 2/7/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I refilled the hopper feeder.

I've seen a female cardinal.

EDIT 2/7/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

There were two cardinals in the forest garden, but it was hard to tell colors at dusk.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

umadoshi

In movie news, Cineplex has a listing for Zhu Yilong's new movie, Scare Out, which is apparently opening in Canada on Feb. 17. I refuse to let myself be excited about this, after having so much hope about Dongji Rescue last summer. But maybe it'll open here and I'll be able to see it! At least the 17th is before the crunch at work starts.

Reading: To shake things up a bit from Kurosagi, this week I reread the first two volumes of Hikaru no Go. In both of these cases, I'm pretty much relying on Goodreads to tell me when I get to volumes I haven't previously read. Awkwardly for my sense of "what even is time?", this means that I now know that I first read vol. 1 of Hikaru no Go in 2006 and vol. 1 of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service in 2008.

My sense of how far I got into Hikaru no Go is completely nonexistent, since I know I read some number of volumes at some point, and I saw some of the anime (long enough ago that I know we were still living in the co-op we moved out of over fifteen years ago), and

scruloose and I (much later) saw the c-drama in its entirety. It's all rather a jumble. But seeing the c-drama did inspire me to finish buying the manga, and I guess its time has come!

I did wind up reading all of Dungeon Crawler Carl, and the upshot, given my uncertainty about finishing it to begin with, is unsurprisingly that I doubt I'll pick up the second book. I think it's very safe to say that LitRPG is not my thing. I did wind up liking the book more overall than I would've thought back around the 40% mark or so, though.

Watching: We're caught up on The Pitt and one episode behind on Frieren. We've also seen the second episode of Midnight Mass, which has a lot of animal harm; I don't have any triggers that I'm aware of, but it was enough to be upsetting.

Playing: I think I've finished Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven, which is to say that I've finished the main plot and done a few wrapping-up things, leaving me free to idly manage the cult and do dungeon runs, but that's usually when I wander off.

Weathering: We're having some of what I would call Normal Snow for the second time this week. The first time, a few days ago, I realized I've started to basically think in terms of "winter days that are cold but not much is happening outside" and "snowstorms", without much in between, but that's probably a result of leaving the house so rarely as much as it's a byproduct of climate change.

marthawells

Some good news:

Both Queen Demon and the Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute anthology, made it on the Locus Recommended Reading List:

https://locusmag.com/2026/02/2025-recommended-reading/

with a lot of other excellent books and stories, including a new section for translated works.

You can also vote on the list for the Locus Awards. Anybody can vote here with an email address: https://poll.voting.locusmag.com/ though they have you fill out a demographic survey first with how many books you read per year, etc.

Of course a lot of great work did not end up on the list, like I was surprised not to see The Witch Roads and The Nameless Land duology by Kate Elliott, which I thought was excellent.

soc_puppet posting in

queerly_beloved

Hello, everyone! I've got some minor rules updates for the community that I want to alert everyone to. They're pretty much all about use of cut tags. (To learn more about cut tags, check this article of Dreamwidth's FAQ or this tutorial post; you can also use Details/Summary HTML instead.)

First, remember to put any content that would require a CW tag under a cut. Unlike Tumblr and some other sites, blanket blocking a tag is more complicated on Dreamwidth, and jump-scaring compulsive readers is probably better avoided!

Second, in addition to properly age labeling any 18+ content, put any NSFW content under a cut. If it's legal in the US, it's legal to share in this community, but I don't want anyone to get in trouble at work for scrolling through this community on their break!

Finally, please put any images that are over 500 pixels in any dimension under a cut, as well as utilizing a cut for posts that are significantly longer than a few hundred words. In addition, if you're sharing more than three images, please put the majority of them under a cut. This is to keep things neat and tidy on reading pages, reduce load times (for images), and to let any compulsive readers out there decide whether they want to read the whole post or not.

I'm also planning to add a new Content Warning label for drugs and/or alcohol; if you have suggestions for any others, please let me know!

I'm welcoming feedback on all of these, or any of the other community rules, so if you have any thoughts to share, I'd love to hear them! Please also take this as an excuse to review the community rules overall ~~as I apparently needed to do myself, oops~~. And thanks for spending time at Queerly Beloved with me!

senmut

AO3 Link | Hunting Gone Wrong (1144 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars [2008] - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Suicide/Suicidal Ideation
Characters: CC-1119 | Appo, Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Suicidal Thoughts, Child Murder
Summary:

Appo is on a death world, hunting, but maybe he was the prey... and the wrong one at that.

Hunting Gone Wrong

They were being hunted, picked off one by one on this death world. Appo wasn't certain what he'd done to anger his Lord, but being sent to hunt a Force User had seemed easy enough on the data pad.

The reality was proving brutally different, and he was down to just two members of the original six that had followed him here to capture the rogue Force User for Lord Vader. Nor could he just comm for back up; the Exactor was pursuing the rag tag Rebels that had been in the system when they dropped.

Appo pulled up a map of the world, narrowing in on the fissure-laden landscape of this island. The Force User had taken out the other drop ship while they were in atmo before ditching from the ship and letting it crash. A small part of him decided it was rather fitting that they were all marooned, and Appo's chances of a pick up were a lot better than the Force User's.

TK-1138 let the world kill him, spooking at a noise and falling into one of the hissing fissures. Appo looked at the last surviving man of his squadron and ground his teeth inside his helmet. They might only be fleshborn, but he'd spent time fine-tuning the training that CC-2224 sent them out with.

They had to be the best to be 501st, after all. That had never stopped being true, from the before-times to now.

"Stay here, get the communication unit pieced together. Fleet should be back any time now."

"Yes sir."

Was the trooper relieved? Hoping Appo was the next victim? It didn't matter. Appo had to catch this karking —

The pain in his head came back, as that slip into his first language usually sparked it.

It was bad enough he held tight to his name.

He'd forgotten what it was like to hunt by himself. Even in his plastoid, it was easier to move and hide and track than when he was half-focused on keeping a squad alive.

He thought he was closing in on the Force User. He was fairly certain they were even injured. All he had to do was clear this climb, and he'd be close enough to be sure. Just a little more to climb —

— and a noise drew his eyes up, to see a face with white marks on bronze skin, blue and white marks on the horns and headtails alike, but eyes like his own staring holes into his soul.

The Jedi were traitors, manipulating the whole war, killing his brothers to cling to their power. The Chancellor said so, and he was their Supreme Commander. The General believed it. Appo followed orders, led the men up the stairs, and they started quartering the Temple, clearing out the traitors of all shapes and sizes.

It didn't matter that this one looked like the Commander. She'd been a traitor too. He brought his blaster up for a clean shot, waiting until she deflected two others to take his own.

He ignored the voice screaming in the back of his head that she had been just a kid.

Appo blinked at the bright light all around him, his concealing helmet (bucket, a piece of him remembered) gone, and him trussed him up as firmly as he'd meant to do to her once he caught the Force User.

She was tossing an EMP grenade in a hand, pacing in front of him.

Just as suddenly as she'd overcome him on the climb, she was there, kneeling in front of him.

"It would be more merciful to kill you," she said. "To you and to my father."

Clone dark eyes staring out of a face like hers.

"I don't feel like being merciful today." She clicked the detonator, and Appo's world disappeared for the second time in less than an hour, this time consumed by searing pain in his skull, the kind that came when he remembered the before times.

Vader's Fist.

Torrent Company.

Memories, like those of two different men, warred within him.

Torrent won.

He found himself retching up the nutripaste he'd been rationing himself since landfall. She at least tilted him with the Force so he didn't get it on himself.

Appo looked at her again, recognizing the hard jawline and set of the eyes as The Captain's trademark resolve. The lines of her marks might scream of the Commander, but he didn't think this one was going to try and make it all better like Commander Vod'ika had tried time and again, after the bad campaigns.

"So, when I take your binders off, I'm not going to stop you if you choose the easy way out," she said in a hard voice. "Didn't even know that kriffing monster still had any of you. Was supposed to be him I was facing down here."

"You… tried… to bait VADER?!" he asked, but of course a child of those two would be that brazen.

She didn't answer, just staring at him with unblinking anger at him for not being the right prey.

The easy way — he knew just what she meant, and as her features blurred with the earlier, rounder face of that child in the Temple, he thought he just might.

"You said your father," he managed to get out instead. "The Captain lives?"

"Somewhere out there. It's not like he and I could work together once I was old enough to go out on my own."

The binders fell away from him, and his gear was right there. A tiny piece of him suggested he go for his blaster, not to take the easy road, but to try and take her down, like he'd been told to.

Just like he'd been told to murder children. And atrocities that made that pale in comparison, ever since the day he followed his General into haran.

"What's the hard way?" he asked, and that got a blink, then a flex of the too-small lekku.

"I take you to a rehab specialist, away from the fighting, and you figure out if you can make peace with the man that chip made of you."

"Will he come there? Or her — kriff." The face and lekku had gone hard all over again on the pronoun. "She's gone?"

"It's why I joined up. He lived, when she didn't come back to us. And I'm not going to stop until he goes down."

"Small part of getting off this rock?"

"Got that covered." She turned to start walking down the easy side of the rise.

A few minutes later, he was following, with just the weapons and rations, hard as it was to leave the armor's protection behind.

She didn't say a word, and he kept following. Maybe, in her, in what she offered as the hard way, he'd find a way to his honor again.

billroper

Day 2 of Capricon (Day 1 for me) is down in the books and it's time to head over and open the dealer table.

This, of course, depends on my ability to get four teenagers back into the car...

purplecat

A picture of a grimacing weeping angel on a TV screen with THE TIME OF ANGELS on it as well.

elainegrey

HOME! I am home home home home.

This business of feeling feelings: so glad to be home. I think i loathe air travel. Thank goodness for e-books, enabling me to dissociate from the experience. There was a period when i was flying cross country and crocheting when audio books and crochet were my flight go tos, but between there being more of me and less room i can't imagine doing much than holding the phone. Between NC and Ohio with stops at a hub were just tiny hops in the air and back down and long stretches of sitting or lugging.

Work went well. We had an all staff meeting where our president cheer-led us in this year's theme of courage under pressure, and i think i needed to hear it. This project will take much courage. It will also be very engaging between now and retirement, and i wonder if it will exhaust me or engage me.

And there was some speaking of retirement. Our product person DH is retiring... soon? I thought it was next year but some chatter made me suddenly wonder if it's this year. I discussed that question with the engineering manager BC as he drove me to the airport. (We both thought it was further off.) BC said he was planning to retire at 60 as our employer has a health care benefit that continues then until Medicare. (He said it as if it was a long way off. Rummages in LinkedIn: hmm, he graduated from college 9 years after i did.) He thinks our employer will pay the same into our health care as they do now after retirement. I just thought we could buy into the same negotiated plan. I can take the benefit on Friday, 2028-03-31.

I don't know if it will be fiscally wise to retire then, but right now i hold that out as conceivable retirement to myself when my sense of energy flags. Working until 62 or 63 would have some financial benefits. I just don't know if i can i develop practices to take care of my physical body.

--== ∞ ==--

I did take double doses of my morning meds yesterday, unintentionally. Last day, i thought, and downed all the remaining pills, forgetting that the trip was a day shorter than planned. I found a pub med review of 400+ overdoses for the med and decided i did not need to call poison control. There's a one percent chance on paper of a bad reaction, and i am a larger person, so the impact would be diluted. I reduced caffeine, crossed my fingers, and all was ok. I have lots of other physical complaints and whining, but nothing worrisome.

Christine says she's feeling stronger and can tell she's healing.

I should move my body today, something in the yarden. Unpack. I probably have a long list of todos.

ysabetwordsmith

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

How would society change if men were able to get pregnant and men and women both had an equal chance of getting pregnant?

Abortion and birth control would be free and legal everywhere. Family leave would be generous. Childcare would be free. It would be a lot better all around.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

"Is AI more important than climate?"

When the BBC recently asked Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai whether the build-out of AI is more important than climate, the question briefly cut through the hype that usually surrounds the AI boom. Pichai acknowledged that AI is dramatically increasing energy in ways current systems “can’t fully cope.”

Another way in which humanity is too stupid to stop sawing off the branch we're all standing on.

AI is not more important than the climate, it is just the latest threat to the climate. AI is a massive energy hog that we cannot afford at a time when we need to be cutting emissions as fast as possible. The most effective way to do that is to use less energy. AI is the opposite of helpful in this regard.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

chez_jae

The Last One by Alexandra Oliva

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

For Christmas, my boss gave me one of those “mystery books” that come wrapped in brown paper so you have no idea what you’re getting. I’ve always thought it was a fun idea, but I never bought one for myself for fear I’d buy a book I already have. When I finally opened the book from my boss, I was hoping for a mystery. What I got was a dystopian novel based on a reality survival show. I confess, I have no interest in dystopian books, movies, etc, and I detest “reality” TV. Nevertheless, the book was a gift, and I took it to work intending to read it on my lunch breaks. The book was The Last One by Alexandra Oliva.

Twelve contestants are chosen for a new, survival-based reality show, which will include group challenges and solo challenges. There’s no voting anyone off; instead contestants are provided with a Latin phrase that they can use if they give up and tap out. The show’s creators assign nicknames to each participant, such as Tracker, Rancher, and Biology. The story focuses mainly on one of the few female contestants, who is known as Zoo for her work with wildlife. For Zoo, this was meant to be one last, grand adventure before getting serious about having children with her husband. She’s tough, resourceful, and resilient, but she harbors little hope of actually winning the contest. As hunger and exhaustion begin to blur the lines between reality and what are carefully staged props, Zoo and the others are unaware that a catastrophic pandemic has swept the globe. Zoo soldiers on, convinced that the emptied buildings and “staged” bodies she encounters are part of the elaborate game she’s playing.

I had low expectations when I began reading this. I intended to soldier through like Zoo, I guess. Instead, I found the story to be utterly engrossing to the point that it annoyed me to have to close it and go back to work. LOL! As a reader, there were times I wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t, either. As it became apparent that Zoo was deluding herself, the story took a darker tone, because you knew the other shoe was going to drop eventually. Characters were portrayed very well, from Zoo to the other contestants, to the smarmy “host” of the show. The narrative skipped around, time-wise, which is never a favorite trope of mine. It alternated with Zoo’s first-person pov in present time, then went back in time to showcase a particular group challenge, which was all in third-person. Interspersed throughout where various social media threads by fans of the show discussing it online. I’m not fond of vacillating timelines and points of view, but it worked for this book.

Favorite lines:
♦ It’s exactly the same except now I can’t see and I’m missing a shoe.
♦ The journey’s too hard only if I’m too soft.

Not an enjoyable read by any stretch, but it was compelling and thought-provoking. Five stars.

Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: "Big Black Car" ~ Gregor Alan Isakov

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy and cold. The snow is melting in patches.

I fed the birds. I've seen a large flock of sparrows, a pair of cardinals, and a starling.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 2/6/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 2/6/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Thanks to

fuzzyred, the Iron Horses page is now up! Go check out this thread to see if you've missed any poems.

Current Mood: accomplished

ysabetwordsmith

Thanks to a donation from

fuzzyred, you can now read the rest of "An Inkling of Things to Come." Shiv and his classmates finish up their first session of worldbuilding.

Current Mood: busy

torachan

1. It's the weekend! And I went in to the office this morning but was able to come home by mid afternoon, so that was nice.

2. We're having home made pizza for dinner again. Same Korean bbq flavor spam and roasted corn as last time, but this time I did not forget the edamame. In fact, I specifically put this on the dinner menu the night after a night when we were having edamame as a side dish with something else, so we'd already have some leftover that I could just add on top of the pizza!

3. It's warm, but it's still blanket weather for Chloe.

senmut

sweettartheart thank you for the lovely card.

daisyface posting in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: grateful

torachan

Recently Finished
Bury Me When I'm Dead
First in a new-to-me mystery series. The first line of the summary caught my interest right away: "Charlene 'Charlie' Mack runs one of the most respected private investigation firms in Detroit—not bad for a smart and savvy black woman struggling with her sexual orientation and a mother with early-onset Alzheimer's." But I just didn't love it. There are several more books in the series and I may check them out in the future, but I'm not racing to read the next one.

Pioneer Girl
Jumping off from the fact that Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter Rose had at one point been a correspondant for Women's World in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, this then takes some liberties with her life to tell a story of a woman who is convinced the ceramic pin given to her grandfather in Vietnam by a woman reporter is the one mentioned in the Little House series, and she becomes obsessed with finding confirmation. I liked this, but not as much as I thought I would. I get that the author needs to make sure that readers get the Little House references but this overdid it, having in some places who chapters that are just retellings of the Little House books.

Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics
I enjoyed the first book in this series so when I saw the sequel pop up in a two for one Audible sale, I bought it. This one was okay but definitely felt less appealing to those not in the target age group, and I also didn't love the narrator.

A Girl Called Echo
Graphic novel about a Metis teen who finds herself traveling back in time to events being covered in her history class, eventually realizing that the people she's meeting during these trips are her ancestors. I liked this a lot. I know virtually nothing about Canadian history, so this was informative in that regard as well.

This Was Our Pact
Graphic novel about a group of friends who vow to follow the river to see where the lanterns end up after being released for the annual lantern festival. It starts off very normal and then suddenly there are talking bears and all sorts of whimsical things happening. I really liked this a lot.

A Star Brighter Than the Sun vol. 2-3

kaberett

The context is Simone Giertz's Incomplete White Puzzle, which A got me partly to troll me and partly because they thought I'd enjoy it and partly because getting the bundle of all three puzzles gets you 20% off individual list prices.

Current status: 105/"500" pieces in their final positions, plus another 57 no longer singletons. I have several semi-sorted categories including (in the halves of the box) "could plausibly have come from a reasonable puzzle" and "bullshit", and (on the table) Swoopy Bullshit, Offset Noses, Weirdly Straight, Multi-Nose Bullshit, and Featureless Curves.

( THOUGHTS )

I am having a very pleasant and soothing time, and I am trying to break up the hyperfocus by instituting a rule of Get Up And Do One Unit Of Something Else After Every (Contiguous) Piece Placed, and yes that is me rules-lawyering after the fact...

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rowyn

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Network

Early Humans

Birdfeeding

Weekly proof of life: mainly media

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Capriconning

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Philosophical Questions: Pregnancy

Artificial Intelligence

Book 12, 2026

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"An Inkling of Things to Come" is now complete!

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