There's little I can say about the political landscape. The news is horrifying pretty much everywhere. US friends in particular right now, especially in ICE-besieged spots, you're in my heart.

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Reading: I haven't picked up a new novel since I finished Inside Threat. I'm still slowly reading Braiding Sweetgrass. And for my first non-work manga read of the year, since I'd really like to get back to actually reading manga, I reread vol. 1 of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, chosen largely because a newish Bluesky friend loves it and it's been so long since I read any of the series. Before the huge lull in it being published in English*, it and Yotsuba&! were the only manga I was actively keeping up with in terms of actually reading, as opposed to a few things that I've still been buying. (Looking at you, once-a-year release of Kaze Hikaru, which I will someday actually read.) But I've basically forgotten everything, so back to the start I go.

*Publication finally--technically--resumed with omnibus editions, and am I still mildly annoyed that to get vol. 15, I had to buy the fifth omnibus, thus rebuying vol. 13-14? Yes. Has any more come out since then? Nope.

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Watching: scruloose and I finished season 1 of Pluribus, which got even weirder than we expected, and in ways we wouldn't have guessed. Really, really good. (Also Yona watched the season finale with us, very intently tracking everything that happened onscreen. No idea why she was suddenly so fascinated.)

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Playing: I put in a bit more time with I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, and it's not really clicking for me; I think this style of game (RPG? A story that unfolds differently depending on your choices, Choose Your Own Adventure-style?) may just not be my thing?

In huge-for-me game news, Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven has dropped. It's the first really major expansion (priced as a full game, which makes sense given the scope) after several smaller expansions, and I'm overwhelmed by the number of new things I suddenly need to do to keep my little cult happy and thriving, but am having fun.

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Weathering/Householding: It's currently very cold by local standards, esp. with the windchill, and tonight we have a lot of snow rolling in that's expected to keep falling all through tomorrow and possibly into Tuesday. Yesterday NSP (the power corporation) (*hisses*) announced that the grid is under an unusually heavy load (presumably due to people heating their homes?) and asked everyone to try to minimize power usage. It is very cold, yes, but not freakishly so, and public sentiment about NSP is...uh...very fucking negative, what with their profits and their constantly skyrocketing fees and their data breach and, oh, the rickety fucking grid that we are all paying through the nose for while fully expecting to lose power every time a breeze picks up. So we're putting off laundry, at least (one of the usual Sunday chores), and I'd had notions of actually baking something (!), but that may not happen; if it does, it'll probably involve something like mixing up cookie dough and only baking a handful in the toaster oven, or seeing about doing the actual baking with supper also in the oven (less likely; we'll probably just avoid the oven entirely).

("Please use less power" is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but the combination of garbage infrastructure and the level of energy poverty in this province makes it insult to injury.)

I finished Chuck Wendig's Wanderers (which according to the acknowledgements clocks in around 800 pages in hard copy) and wound up in that all-too-familiar place of "that was interesting, but I don't think I'm going to bother with the sequel". (Although by definition, I imagine the sequel must be telling a very different kind of story.) No idea why it is that I can often tell only partway through a book that I probably won't pick up its sequel and yet still want to finish the current one.

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I also just read Inside Threat, the sixth of K.B. Spangler's Rachel Peng [see icon] novels. There's one more planned, and then that's it for this novel series; I think she's still intending to write a third Hope Blackwell novel (some of the events of that probably-someday book directly influenced what happened in this one, but the whole 'verse is a very twisty pretzel in terms of chronological vs. publication order). And this reminds me--I don't think I ever mentioned here that Act III of the A Girl and Her Fed comic, the core of the whole thing, wrapped up a few months ago, ending the series. (IIRC, Spangler does have ideas that could eventually turn into a fourth act of the webcomic, but has no current plans to pursue doing it. It sounds like AGAHF and the associated works understandably got harder and more exhausting to do over the last decade as the real-world US political situation got worse and worse and worse.)

There isn't a whole lot I can say about a sixth novel in a series, but Spangler's descriptions of the series when she's doing promo on Bluesky always entertain me. Yesterday she posted "It's book launch week! Spend the weekend catching up with my bargain basement cyborg hivemind. Murder, mystery, and a detective who just wants to be left alone with her poetry and bad romance novels"; here's her "what's this series about?" Bluesky thread from a few days ago.

So once again: highly recommended, and it's entirely possible to just read this set of novels without reading/knowing the comic. It means not knowing a lot of things about the world overall, but they're things that Rachel herself doesn't know at this point (and doesn't learn about until Act II of the comic, which starts after her books have wrapped up). I enjoy the comic and other material very much, but the Rachel books are by far my favorite.

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And that bit got long, so just quickly:

--I'm a few more chapters into Braiding Sweetgrass and haven't picked up a next novel yet.

--scruloose and I are current on the new season of The Pitt and four episodes into Pluribus, and just watched the season 2 premiere of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. (Now to just hope this season covers past vol. 10 of the manga, since after we finished season 1 in 2024, I read volumes 7-10 before deciding to stop reading ahead and stick with the anime. It'd be nice to get at least a bit of new-to-me material this season, given that. Anyone know offhand how many episodes S2 will be?)

--And I've technically started a new (!) video game, in the form of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (on Switch), but am not very far at all yet.

As so often happens, I had several things I meant to post about and now they've mostly evaporated.

But I do know my tabs situation is staggering out of control. (Reliably over 1700 for at least the last couple of weeks.) Odds that I'll get to replying to all the posts I've read but opened in a tab to reply to later on...are currently very slim.

Have a link: Sarah Kurchak wrote about Heated Rivalry for TIME recently: "Heated Rivalry Handles Autism With Love, Care, and a Touch of Awkwardness".