Fandom5K Check-In Open (Closes 15 May)
May. 8th, 2026 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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fandom5kIf you have multiple assignments (for example, an assignment and a pinch hit) please fill the form in separately for each assignment that you have.
You are required to check in by 10:59pm EDT 15 May 2026. (countdown) If you don't, I will assume you are defaulting. This is also the default deadline to avoid makeup assignments for future rounds.
Please note that all people participating in the exchange as a creator (either as a participant or as a pinch hitter) are required to check in. If you have already turned in your assignment, you're not required to check in, but it's no problem if you do.
Keep an eye out for new and updated pinch hits!
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30 Days of Blake's 7 - Day 8
May. 8th, 2026 11:03 pmjulesjonesTaking the question as actually meaning romance and not just sex:
"What the writers intended" - well, they mostly didn't so it's a bit hard to have a favourite. There's clearly an emotional relationship between Avon and Cally, enough for Vila to believe Blake in Voice from the Past when Blake tells him that Avon and Cally have paired up, but one would think that if they really had taken it any further than just good friends Vila would have known about it. But of the ones where there's at least a hint, that one.
"What the actors apparently didn't realise they were opening up to wilful misinterpretation" - Blake and Avon. As I mentioned a few days ago, I did not see a romantic or sexual attraction there until I first encountered Watervole in a con dealer's room and she tried to sell me a slash zine. I noted that I had no objection to gay smut, I just didn't find it believable with those two. So she told me to go and watch a particular couple of episodes/scenes with the sound off and watch the body language. Um. Yes. I don't know whether those characters were in fact at it, but I do think Avon would have liked to have been. :-) (And resented like hell the fact that Blake had that effect on him in addition to the unwanted emotional attraction.)
(no subject)
May. 8th, 2026 05:24 pmlannamichaelsCan the person who keeps putting in AO3 password reset requests for me please knock it off?
They did this last year too but at least that was only a bunch in one day, these keep happening.
Ughhhh.
The Language of Pinocchio.
May. 8th, 2026 10:11 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
languagehat_feedThe Storica blog has a post about Pinocchio that has some Hattic material:
Carlo Collodi serialised the story in Il Giornale per i bambini, the first Italian children’s magazine, beginning on July 7, 1881. The first installment was titled Storia di un burattino — Story of a Puppet. Eight episodes later, over four months, the Fox and the Cat lured Pinocchio into a forest at night, robbed him, and strung him from the branch of la Quercia grande, the Great Oak: gli legarono le mani dietro le spalle, e passatogli un nodo scorsoio intorno alla gola, lo attaccarono penzoloni al ramo di una quercia. He shut his eyes, opened his mouth, stretched his legs, gave one great convulsion, and stayed there as if frozen stiff. Fine.
Collodi was done. He had collected his fee. Italian children wrote in begging him to continue. He resumed reluctantly five months later, on February 16, 1882, with the title changed from Storia di un burattino to Le avventure di Pinocchio and a Blue Fairy — first introduced as a literal child-corpse with turquoise hair, lying in a window of a forest cottage — appearing in chapter sixteen to revive him. […]
The legacy of the book has almost nothing to do with the satire. It has to do with the language.
When Italy was politically unified in 1861, the linguist Tullio De Mauro’s classic estimate is that only about 2.5% of the population spoke standard Italian — roughly 630,000 people out of twenty-five million. The rest spoke a mosaic of regional dialects mutually unintelligible enough that a Neapolitan recruit could not understand a Piedmontese officer. The new state needed a single shared language, and fast. They chose Tuscan, the literary tongue of Dante and Petrarch — but most Italians had never heard Tuscan spoken in daily life.
What got Tuscan into ordinary Italian homes was schoolbooks. Pinocchio became one of them. Collodi wrote in clean middle-register Florentine Tuscan: short sentences, common verbs, concrete nouns — pane, naso, bugia, legno, fata, volpe (bread, nose, lie, wood, fairy, fox). The book ended up on every elementary school syllabus and stayed there. Generations of Italian children learned to read in the language Collodi had already simplified for them. By 1951, when De Mauro re-counted, the proportion of Italians who could speak standard Italian had climbed from 2.5% to roughly 87%. Television finished that job. Mass schooling, with Pinocchio in it, started it. […]
What’s strange about reading the original today — not the Disney version, not even a translation, the original — is that it doesn’t feel old. The Italian is plain enough that an early learner with a textbook behind them can finish a chapter in a sitting. The plot moves at television speed: thirty-six chapters of trouble before the redemption finally lands. The pictures are vivid, weird, and entirely Collodi’s: a piece of wood that talks back, a fox pretending to be blind, a donkey at the bottom of the sea. You do not need a literary education to follow it. He wasn’t writing for one.
Most translations soften the book. Most adaptations cut the donkey-skin drum. Most adults who think they know Pinocchio are remembering Disney. The book itself is still the book Collodi reluctantly extended past chapter fifteen because Italian children would not let it end.
How About Some Real Health Care?
May. 8th, 2026 03:36 pmyourlibrarianThe thing is though, the topics revealed in the study have very little to do with health and medicine and a lot more to do with appearance and weight (plastic surgeons are influencers!) This makes sense, both because women outnumber men as both influencers and viewers, and also because this area of "health" is particularly apt to be a source of revenue for influencers, whether trolling for clients or selling people stuff they think will help them. The number of people who even claim a medical background or auxiliary medical training are outnumbered by people who don't.
2) I mentioned in my last post watching the Roku Soccer Comes to America documentary. Although not that enlightening to somebody who lived through virtually all of it, two things were singled out as being critical to truly establishing the sport which I hadn't thought about. I found it an interesting coincidence that Ted Turner should die at the same time I was seeing it. ( Read more... )
3) Saw all of S2 of Percy Jackson and I think I enjoyed it more than S1. ( Read more... )
4) Daredevil's second season is more of a favorite for me than the 1st. ( Read more... )
5) I speed watched High Country. ( Read more... )
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 3
Want to leave a Kudos?
Farm update
May. 8th, 2026 10:39 pmluzula( Read more... )
Cosgrove Hall Films Archive in Sale, England
May. 8th, 2026 04:00 pmatlas_obscura_places_feed
Founded by animators Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall in the suburbs of Manchester in 1976, Cosgrove Hall Films was one of the United Kingdom’s leading animation studios in the twentieth century. Notably, the studio used a combination of hand-drawn and stop motion animation. Some of their creations, such as Danger Mouse and Count Duckula, would go on to achieve international fame. Other productions would become staples of British television, such as Chorlton & the Wheelies, and the studios have also received special recognition for their 1980s adaptations of The Wind in the Willows and The BFG.
Going into the twenty-first century, the studio continued to succeed creatively, but the global financial crisis in 2008 eventually led to Cosgrove Hall Films closing down in 2011. The studio’s extensive collection of cels, stop-animation models, sets, props, and other documents were held in storage for a while but faced potential destruction if a permanent home could be found for the materials. Fortunately, the Waterside art venue in the Manchester suburb of Sale was able to save all of the original material.
Highlights from the collection are now permanently on display in the Sale Library. The collection features various materials from many of Cosgrove Hall Films’ most popular productions, including scripts, conceptual art, storyboards, cels, stop-motion models, props, and sets, all of which illustrate the production process for creating animated films. Adults who grew up with these animation series will visit the archive to reconnect with their childhood, but children will enjoy simply seeing the cartoon characters, and even foreign visitors who may be only vaguely familiar with Cosgrove Hall Films can still learn more about the animation process as well as appreciate the artistic skill that went into the studio's hand-drawn cartoons and stop-motion series.
A cat sonnet
May. 8th, 2026 04:13 pmpetraUpon the couch, on laundry, not just laps.
But just as all the old roads lead to Rome,
The cat returns to sit on me. Perhaps
She smells the cortisol of stress, and knows
That I'm inclined to stroke her velvet fur --
Once void-black, now specked galaxy, it flows
Softer than kitten fluff. And so she purrs,
Then settles with her head upon my wrist
And tush on laptop keys, immune to shame.
Despite spring air, my little cat finds bliss
In cuddling up and acting nearly tame.
Nine pounds of feline is enough to pin
Me to the couch, and so her reign begins.
Wheeee!
May. 8th, 2026 12:41 pmcupcake_gothRelated to going to The Herbfarm: I rewatched The Menu, because while The Herbfarm isn't as pretentious as the restaurant in the movie, it's similar. (Plus The Menu has become one of my favorite black comedies.)
Also related to going to The Herbfarm: I found this tutorial to turn a necktie into a fancy jabot, and now my replica Hannibal "murder tie" is in a form I will wear more often. However, I didn't use a glue gun, but carefully stitched the layers. Because wearing that tie to The Herbfarm is *funny*, dammit.
What’re ye reading friday
May. 8th, 2026 08:18 pmshadowhiveyarnofariadne do this, think of doing it myself and every time I’ve thought about it not so… here’s the first one. It’s not gonna be weekly though.What have you recently finished reading?
Book wise nothing since Hawkins Horrors, which was a Stranger Things book set before season 4 where some of the characters tell each other scary stories. It was pretty good! Most of the stories were really good and it was a nice fun read.
Comic wise was the free comic book day comics I mentioned in the last post, Minotaur and Lego Batman. Before that was Fantastic 4.
Graphic novel wise I honestly can’t remember.
What are you currently reading?
I have three books I’m currently reading though I’ve not read them recently.
First is Heated Rivalry. I picked it up from Asda earlier in the year and read a few chapters and then read a few more but I just… stalled. I know it’s partly cause of the drilling which made reading hard in general, but also my energy has been so off too which has made reading hard.
But I have enjoyed what I read. For those that don’t know it’s about Ilya and Shane, two rival ice hockey players who also… well they fuck. I’m not too far into it (and I need to watch more of the show too) but I do love these boys. I still don’t know much about Hockey though.
Second is Strange Pictures, which I have on my kindle and not read since 5SOS, though I have meant to. I did read the first full story (there’s four I think?). The first story, at least, is about a set of drawings posted on a blog that at first don’t seem to be unusually but as the story goes on you realise they have another meaning. The first one ended so eerie and I’m curious to read the rest, I just haven’t had the focus.
The third is The Mandalorian Visual Guide. I’d read some of the first section but again, stalled. I do always love these guides (I still need to finish the acolyte one, it got moved and I never went back to it). I’m a sucker for Star Wars guides, learning more about ships and races and characters. They’re always so interesting (and I’m so hyped for the new film).
Also I’m technically reading Flight Of Icarus, another Stranger Things novel about Eddie but… it’s awol. I’ve no idea where it’s gone and haven’t seen it in months.
What will you be reading next?
Book wise I wanna read one of my new Agatha Christie books though I’m not sure which. I had intended to do this years Read Christie and… this year got away from me.
Other than that I have a bunch of unread books that I really need to get through which are mounting. (I’ve not read a Star Wars one in so long and I wanna get Clown In A cornfield 2 and the Stranger Things Dustin book).
Comic wise I have the rest of the Free Comic book day comics to read, plus the latest Fantastic 4 and the first issue of the Maul comic. First there’s the pile of Exquiste Corpses comics and the umbrella academy ones (I’ve way behind on getting them oop)
Graphic novel wise I wanna read the Star Wars ones I’ve got and the Marvel Rivals one I picked up.
I’m sure I’m missing ones but…
Now it’s time to watch David Attenborough's 100 Years on Planet Earth and then likely game (mum’s gone to sleep so The Pitt will likely be this weekend). I might finish the who audio I had on last night (Red Dawn) but we’ll see.
new Bujold podcast interview is up
May. 8th, 2026 11:28 amlois_mcmaster_bujold_feedYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxObg...
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4TDK...
and doubtless other venues.
By the way, if folks want more, I have an Author Q&A slot right here on Goodreads with, by now, over 1500 answered questions:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/1609...
Which should keep anyone busy reading for a while.
Ta, L.
posted by Lois McMaster Bujold on May, 08
another excellent and busy day
May. 8th, 2026 06:39 pmthe_shoshannaSea kayaking!
Today we had an early breakfast, because we had to walk out the door at 8:40 to catch a bus to the place where our kayak tour would launch. The earliest option for breakfast at this small guesthouse is 8, which is what we'd requested, but we went into the breakfast room at 7:40, since the muesli and fruit and such were already out, and she'd said we could take milk from the fridge if we were making coffee or tea with the kettle and supplies in our room, so we figured the same would apply to taking it for an early muesli breakfast. She came in about ten minutes later and when we said we didn't need a cooked breakfast today, given our time limitations, she was having none of it! She pressed us ("You have to eat!") until I said I'd have one egg -- yesterday we had two each, plus baked beans and tomato and basically the full English™️ -- whereupon she brought out two eggs for each of us, plus toast, slices of cheese (Geoff's not a big fan of cheese and I didn't eat the cheddar because this was getting to be a lot of food! but I admit I delightedly chowed down on the Wensleydale with cranberries, mmmmmm), and sliced tomato and cucumber, not to mention trying to give us beans as well, but that we did manage to fend off. She's very enthusiastic!Even so, we did manage to get out in good time, and walked down to the center of town to catch a bus to a stop called Ouaisne Junction, and if you think we had the slightest idea how to pronounce that, you're mad. We'd asked our host (who is from Latvia) and she took a guess as more or less "wash-neh," but when we showed the written word to the bus driver he pronounced it basically "way-nay" or "way-neh," so that's what we're going with.
Anyway, here on Jersey the buses only stop at a stop if a stop is requested, if someone on board presses the signal that they want to get off there or if someone is waiting there to get on; otherwise they just blow past it. Nor are the stops announced. So you can't just figure you want the ninth stop and count, and you can't always see the stop name as you blow by, and of course we have no idea what our stop looks like. Fortunately the local bus app can track you along a bus route map that shows the stops; it's supposedly also showing live tracking of the bus, but the "live" tracking is often a minute or two outdated, so our little location dot was often a stop or two ahead of the bus icon 😂. Still, I was able to track us and know when to signal that we wanted the next stop. Yet another way in which travel without a phone and a data plan just isn't really feasible any more...
We walked ten minutes from the bus stop down a country road to a lovely beach, and the van from the kayak company, towing a giant rack of kayaks, passed us on the way. We got there and meet up with our guide Derek, who was indeed the husband of Trudie who was our guide yesterday; we were already in bathing suits under our clothes, so we stripped down and got fitted with sleeveless wetsuits and windbreaker jackets and floatation vests and also helmets juuuuuust in case we dumped a kayak and landed headfirst on a rock, and put on the water shoes we'd brought from home (which we wear for lake kayaking there). There were supposed to be three other people on this morning's tour, but their ferry had been delayed, so it was just me and Geoff. And then we launched! The water was cool when we waded in to launch, I wouldn't have wanted to go swimming, but with the wetsuits and jackets -- and exertion -- we were perfectly comfortable.
We spent a good two hours paddling along the coast, with almost constant (and fascinating) narration from Derek. He pointed out Nazi fortifications (including what we'd thought was a seawall along the edge of our launch beach, but nope, it was an anti-tank barricade) and caves that were inhabited by Neanderthals for thousands of years, and different kinds of seabirds (many of which are experiencing population crashes) and geological features and formations, and told us lots of stories about life and resistance during the Occupation (which his mother lived through). The wind and water were active but not too strong or choppy; paddling was quite manageable even for us lake-kayaking amateurs.
Exxxxxxxcept when Geoff didn't see a barely submerged rock in front of him, bumped it, momentarily grounded his kayak, and then tipped and dumped it and himself trying to get unstuck! But Derek had walked us through how to get back in before we even put the kayaks in the water -- these were sit-on kayaks, so they didn't fill up with water or anything -- and he paddled over, righted the kayak, and steadied it for Geoff to hoist himself back into (onto) it, while I hovered a safe distance away. Geoff was drenched, of course, but not even bruised, and the helmet was not needed, and it was warm and sunny enough that he didn't get chilled or anything, and mostly dried off pretty quickly.
After two hours we returned to our launch point, stripped out of all our borrowed gear, and said goodbye to Derek with many thanks; both this and yesterday's walk were great experiences, well worth their cost, and we plan to leave some glowing Tripadvisor reviews. The beach had perfectly acceptable public toilets, which I ducked into to change out of my swimsuit into the bra and underwear I'd brought with me, a bathing suit not being particularly comfortable as everyday walking clothing; Geoff's suit, of course, functioned fine as walking shorts. Derek had told us the pub next to the beach had excellent beer, but we wanted food more and also, having had a very pricy though tasty dinner last night, didn't want to pay their prices, so instead we got a couple of sandwiches from the beach-shack cafe, plus a few handfuls of the trail mix we hit a grocery the other day to put together, and that did the trick just fine. Geoff had filled a water bottle at the guesthouse this morning, but unfortunately I really dislike the taste of the tap water there, so I only had a swallow.
Then we walked along the long wide sweeping curve of the beach in the opposite direction from where we'd kayaked; we'd gone south and east around a point, and now we walked north and west, passing a variety of people enjoying the beach, a group gathered and getting ready around a rack of canoes whose towing van identified them as Healing Waves Ocean Therapy, pretty cool! and also a number of waterfront hotels, one of which Geoff just looked up as I'm typing this and informed me costs about $400 a night, jeepers.
We ended up at St Brelade's Parish Church, which had a beautiful stone ceiling inside, and very warm and welcoming flyers and info posted, and also a vast and fascinating graveyard around it, with stones as old as [illegible] and as recent as last year. There was also an older side chapel building with partially preserved paintings on the ceiling that the posted info said dated from 1375 and 1425, mostly too faint to fully appreciate but including a beautiful and well-preserved (or perhaps well-restored?) Annunciation.
By that time we were pretty wiped, so we walked up to the main road and waited only ten minutes or so for a bus back into the center of St Helier, the capital, where we're staying. No need to paranoically track our progress when we're taking it to the end of the line! We wandered homeward through a big shopping area, and I seized the opportunity to check the backpack options at the local outdoors supply store, but my ideal unicorn backpack remains sadly mythical. We weren't terribly hungry, but stopped at the same nearby cafe we went to before, where we split a really good teriyaki salmon bowl, and Geoff got a pint of a draft beer he'd liked the other day and I tried a bottle from what Derek had told us is now the only craft brewery still operating on the island. The brewery is unappetizingly called Stinky Bay, but the IPA I got of theirs was delicious.
Then we staggered home at about five-thirty, showered (unfortunately both the water pressure and the hot water supply could be better here, but it's a functional shower and that's what we needed), and started writing up the day. And here we are!
If you're enjoying my trip blog, you might also enjoy Geoff's, which is at https://geoff-hart.com/fiction/Channel-Islands-2026/index.html -- he sets up the outline in advance, so click each day that has actually happened to see his writeup. Eventually he'll probably post some pictures, which I won't be doing (except maybe after we get home); I'm the logistics officer of our trips, but he's the photographer.
Tomorrow is Liberation Day! Our plan is just to head into the center of town after breakfast and try to find a place from which we can watch the ceremonies and reenactments, and then hopefully there will be festivities and whatnot. Also hopefully it won't rain much; today's weather was spectacular but it's not going to last.
Assortment
May. 8th, 2026 07:32 pmoursinStory of enslaved boy featured in 1748 Joshua Reynolds portrait emerges in new study - I online attended a seminar the other week about black children in England from the C17th to C19th which leant fairly heavily on depictions in art (and also sounded a bit like the speaker had pulled out a bit at random examples from their 10 or was it more boxes of research materials) and implied that we could not know what happened to them once they were not more or less cute ornamental pets, so this article goes some way to show that sometimes the larger life story can be discovered.
***
This is interesting, given that it is a phase of the parturition cycle that doesn't tend to get that much attention - okay, I have read More Than The Average Person on 'bringing on the menses' and further measures if they were not brought on, and a fair amount about actual childbirth in history: but this is a bit unusual: Anticipating Birth in Early Modern England:
Scholars have described the days leading up to birth in the early modern period as a time when women purchased linens, prepared bedchambers, and called upon the services of a midwife and their gossips. However, manuscript recipe collections reveal that preparations in anticipation of labour went beyond such measures and incorporated the consumption of specific medicines. This article studies remedies that were designed to be taken six weeks before birth to reveal, in new ways, the experiences of late pregnancy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
***
More exciting work from the good people at CamPop, this time circling out from the census records: By linking millions of census records across decades, researchers are turning static snapshots of Victorian Britain into dynamic life histories – revealing how people moved, worked and lived in ways never before possible.
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‘Live and let live’: Northern Ireland historian uncovers surprising era of tolerance of gay men:
Hulme said tacit ignorance and public silence enabled male queerness to flourish with only rare exposure, condemnation or regulation, with a “live and let live” ethos especially prevalent in the working class.
***
Muttering that this information can be found in the household recipe books at much less elite social levels, still, it's useful work if it gets people aware of just how diverse British food at that period was: The King’s Dinner: Family, nation, and identity on the British table, 1760-1820.
Rings Loop Trail in Essex, California
May. 8th, 2026 02:00 pmatlas_obscura_places_feed
The "Hole in the Wall" area, in the middle of the Mojave National Preserve, contains photogenic tuff units, volcanic rocks that were formed, not by a flow of molten lava, but by the settling out of individual particles from a cloud of volcanic ash. If the particles are hot enough to stick together, the result is a "welded" tuff. That's what's happened here. The welding is uneven, so that the less cemented parts weather out more easily. One result is that the tuff weathers into spires and hoodoos and even more convoluted shapes. Another is "cavernous weathering," where the softer areas weather out to yield abundant hollows and caves, giving a "Swiss cheese" appearance to cliffs and slopes. The overall effect is otherworldly but attractive. It's possible these caves may have given the area its name, but if that were the case it should have been "holes" in the wall.
Banshee Canyon, named because of the howling it makes in the desert wind, is a picturesque slot canyon running east-west, a larger fissure in the tuff that has been widened by erosion. It exits out the cliff that bounds the tuff on the west. The striking appearance of the entrance to Banshee Canyon where it breaks the cliff is a more likely source of the name "hole in the wall."
A trail running through Banshee Canyon gives a close-up view of the tuff and its features. Unusually, iron rings suspended from bolts embedded in the rock have been installed at two places where the watercourse, and thus the trail, is nearly vertical. Such direct aid installations are unusual on public trails in natural areas in the US, and are unique in this vicinity.
‘This Is Not Going to Be the Next COVID’
May. 8th, 2026 12:55 pmtheatlantic_health_feedThe MV Hondius, the cruise ship where an outbreak of hantavirus was confirmed over the weekend, is moving once again. On Wednesday, after three people were evacuated, the ship departed from Cabo Verde. By Sunday, it will arrive at the Canary Islands, where the Spanish government says it can dock. So far, though, three people have died in the outbreak, and the ship’s remaining passengers still need to be monitored for illness. Local leaders would rather the ship go somewhere else. And a chorus of TikToks that have each been viewed and liked millions of times call for a different approach: “Sink that ship.”
That’s probably (hopefully) a joke. But a perusal of the internet—both the memes and the upswell of concerned armchair epidemiologists—suggests that some people at least semi-sincerely fear that a pandemic is imminent. “I don’t want your rat poo virus. I have summer plans,” one woman posted on TikTok. (Hantavirus infects humans mostly through contact with excretions from infected rodents.) Yesterday, I saw that an old friend had posted on her Instagram story about a patient who had been medically evacuated to a town next to hers in Switzerland. “I just finished mentally recovering from Covid man,” she wrote next to a crying emoji. A new TikTok of a guy doing the Renegade—a dance inextricably linked to the early pandemic and the new influencers it minted—has been watched 20 million times and counting.
That people are concerned, or at least keeping an eye on hantavirus, makes sense. But all of the epidemiological evidence so far suggests that the general public has very little to worry about. “This is not going to be the next COVID,” Marion Koopmans, a virologist at Erasmus Medical Center, in the Netherlands, told me.
Hantavirus is a respiratory illness that starts out much like the flu: fever, aches, and chills. In severe cases, breathing becomes difficult, and the heart struggles to pump blood. Andes hantavirus—the species that the World Health Organization confirmed is causing the outbreak on the MV Hondius—has a fatality rate of about 40 percent.
Most types of hantavirus cannot spread among humans; everyone who gets sick must have been exposed to an infected rodent’s bodily fluids. But Andes hantavirus can, on occasion, be passed among people in extremely close contact. In one study of Andes hantavirus in Chile, sex partners of the infected had an 18 percent risk of catching the virus, but the risk to other members of the household was just 1 percent. In countries where Andes hantavirus is endemic, contact tracing classifies as high-risk people who are either sleeping next to or caring for the infected, Koopmans, whose work focuses in part on the transmission of zoonotic disease, said.
The cruise-ship outbreak is the first of its kind. But experts I spoke with told me that it’s no more alarming than the normal spread of the virus in countries where it’s endemic—it’s just a logistical nightmare because of the number of governments involved. “It’s very serious for the people exposed, and there’s some transmission to people that are very close contacts. But beyond that, there is very little risk,” Koopmans said. Alasdair Munro, an immunologist working to develop a hantavirus vaccine, told me in an email that the only way a pandemic could result from Andes hantavirus is “if the virus had somehow mutated,” becoming a fast-moving infection that, like measles or COVID, can spread more readily. “So far there is no indication of that,” he added.
Cruise ships are great breeding grounds for viral transmission. They assemble a group of people from around the world, keep them in close quarters with one another’s germs, and then release them back to their homes. But the contained setting of this outbreak has delivered at least one win for public-health officials: “We know precisely who was exposed and where all of those people are,” Munro said. That includes passengers who disembarked two weeks ago on the remote island of St. Helena. The WHO is holding regular meetings to coordinate contact tracing and medical evacuations of people aboard the ship who are showing symptoms.
The United States elected to leave the WHO earlier this year, and public-health experts are already critiquing what they’ve deemed to be a lackluster federal response. (The Department of Health and Human Services did not return a request for comment.) Still, health departments in five U.S. states—Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia—have identified people within their state’s borders who were on the cruise ship, and are monitoring them for symptoms. Signs of infection can take as long as eight weeks to appear, which can make for onerous contact tracing and quarantine protocols. But that long incubation period is still factored into containment strategies, Munro said.
During a press conference yesterday, a reporter asked how the WHO’s leaders could be so confident that Andes hantavirus won’t start a pandemic. COVID, the reporter noted, had also started small. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s acting director of epidemic and pandemic management, pointed out that whereas COVID had been novel, hantaviruses are not. The experts I spoke with emphasized that the only thing unusual about this outbreak is that it occurred on a luxury cruise ship. Unexpected things, of course, can and do happen in epidemiology. But all evidence suggests that hantavirus will remain an intimate tragedy.
The online response, meanwhile, has felt more like a soap opera. People on TikTok are posting daily updates on the “hantavirus drama,” thanking the Spanish passenger who “got the tea” on passengers who disembarked early and vowing that they’d choose social isolation over going back to Zoom parties. Nurses that worked through COVID are dissecting the news on Reddit. Marjorie Taylor Greene is posting about ivermectin. Hantavirus is almost certainly not the next COVID. But it has provided the world with an excuse to revisit and rehash a time when a virus actually did change all of our lives.
raspberry swirl cheesecake bars
May. 8th, 2026 04:46 pmsmittenkitchen_feed
[Fic] Maids of (dis)Honor (Heated Rivalry, Rose Landry/Svetlana Vetrova, Mature)
May. 8th, 2026 12:15 pmgrammarwomanAuthor:
grammarwomanFandom/Characters: Heated Rivalry, Rose Landry/Svetlana Vetrova
Rating: Mature
Word length: ~2000
Content Notes: Mild spoiler for "The Long Game", uses TV characters
Author's Notes: Did the world need another Rose/Sveta wedding hookup fic? According to my brain...yes. Yes it did. Also, it has been 13 (holyshit) years since I last posted fic. Heated Rivalry, look what you've done to me!
Read it here, or at the AO3!
Maids of (dis)Honor
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Friday open thread: Dreamwidth
May. 8th, 2026 05:38 pmdolorosa_123weeks4dreamwidth. I haven't been able to be very engaged with this at all, as it coincided with a professionally and personally very busy time, but I was reminded again of what a singularly wonderful little corner of the internet we have here, and how happy I am that this is my primary social internet home. Therefore, this Friday's prompt is: what is special for you about Dreamwidth, and why do you like it?
I could answer with all the usual things, like the fact that makes money solely from user subscriptions, rather than algorithmic feeds, ads, or selling user data, that it has an ethos built on privacy and persistent pseudonymy, that it's text-based and slower-moving, the icon culture inherited from LJ in which icon use becomes a whole visual language, that there are filtered levels of privacy controlled by the user on a post-by-post basis, and so on, but all that's been said by many people, many times.
As well as all of the above, the things that I find particularly special about Dreamwidth (and which solidified its place as my primary internet home many years ago) are:
What about you? What do you appreciate about Dreamwidth? What keeps you here?