One of the sites I follow, Skep's Place, has done something really neat and created a listing of Neocities sites that have RSS feeds. You can check it out here: The BIG List of Neocities RSS Feeds.

Last year I was involved in sending postcards to voters and I'm doing that again. I'm working on a campaign for Postcards to Swing States. This campaign is to send cards to voters in Georgia with what they call "news-boosting headlines" - accurate news headlines from fair sources. The goal is to help combat disinformation and make sure voters in states with competitive Senate elections know how bad the current agenda has been for them. This is the group that sends out cards in multiples of 100 (or a single 100). I chose just 100 and have until February 2 to get them finished up. I'm currently about 1/4 of the way through them.

I also picked up some postcarding for Markers for Democracy. This group lets you pick how many postcards you want to write and I usually pick just 10 addresses at a time. I'd much rather do 100 cards 10 at a time instead of having the whole 100 staring at me. This campaign is a little bit different in that they have it split into 3 groups of voters, divided by age - Gen X/older Millenials, Millenials and I think the last group might have been Boomers. I chose to write to my people, the Gen Xers.

So hopefully next week I will have a finished cross-stitch project to show off (finally!) and maybe a report on a fun activism thing I signed up for this week. We'll see!

Listening

Some podcasts I've listened to this week:

  • Hyperfixed - The Passion of the Fruit
  • 99% Invisible - Welcome to Jurassic Art
  • The Dream - How is this legal? - All about private equity.
  • Damn Interesting Week - 2026-01-02 - The Nation's Dads - I subscribe to their website via RSS because they put out tons of interesting links every week. I didn't realize they also had a podcast till recently! They read out some of the stories they've linked to in the past week.

    • I need to get back to listening to music again. I listen when I'm driving in the car but that's just a bunch of old favorites on my iPod, not even anything new. Usually when I'm doing something around the house, like cleaning, I'll listen to a podcast. Maybe I need to switch some podcast time for some music instead.

    Reading

    So last week I was reading Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile by Julia Fox and I finished that this past week. I am so, so mad at the treatment given to Juana of Castile! I mentioned last week that she should have been the rightful queen of Castile after Isabella (this is the same Isabella of Isabella and Ferdinad who underwrote Christopher Columbus's New World journey) died. Her father would have lost control (and power) over Castile and been relegated to ruling only his principality, Aragon, so he made out that Juana was mentally unfit.

    After her husband, Philip, died it was taking a long time for Juana to transport her husband's body to Granada, where she was insistent on burying him for reasons explained in the book. There were legitimate reasons for how long this was taking - she was following the protocol of the monasteries she was stopping at on the way, for one - but Ferdinand spun that into a story of her refusing to let go of her husband's body and even claimed she would throw open the coffin to kiss the corpse. No one denied what he said so he was allowed to rule in her stead and send her into protective custody/captivity.

    Now, Juana was known to get emotional, to stop eating, to throw temper tantrums and there were even periods of time where she refused to go to Mass - but she wasn't insane. It's just how she coped with what life threw at her. However, her behavior and general feelings toward the idea of women rulers worked against her. When Ferdinand died, her son took over and she wasn't even told about the death until years later! However, as much as she wanted to be free and to be allowed to rule, she also was very protective of her son's rights and didn't want to do anything to harm them. It just sucks and so many people did wrong by her.

    And, I think we all know what happened to Katherine of Aragon. The book explained why she chose to keep fighting the divorce instead of just giving in, which would have made her and Mary's lives so much easier.

    Once I finished that book I picked up the last book that I bought during my e-book buying splurge back in December - The Butcher in the Forest by Premeed Mohamed. If you like dark fairy tales, I highly recommend this! The main character has to go into a fairy tale forest that people usually don't escape from - and she has already escaped it once. But the ruling tyrant's children have wandered in and, knowing her history, he sends her to go fetch them. This is a deliciously dark fairytale land with things that are not as they seem and rules that have to be followed if you have any hope of escaping - although no one has bothered to tell you what the rules actually are, except you only have one day to get out of the forest, otherwise it claims you. I finished this in 2 days.

    After that I wasn't really sure what I wanted to read so I did something unusual for me and checked out 2 different library books on the Libby/Overdrive app. The Waiting Game by Nicola Clark is a history not about Tudor queens but about their ladies-in-waiting. It goes over not only their daily lives but also what kinds of loyalty choices they had to make.

    I also checked out a book that I'd had on my wishlist for a while, When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning. This is the description from Libby:

    When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned over 100 million books and caused fearful citizens to hide or destroy many more. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops and gathered 20 million hardcover donations. In 1943, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million small, lightweight paperbacks, for troops to carry in their pockets and their rucksacks, in every theater of war.

    Comprising 1,200 different titles of every imaginable type, these paperbacks were beloved by the troops and are still fondly remembered today. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy; in hellish trenches in the midst of battles in the Pacific; in field hospitals; and on long bombing flights. They wrote to the authors, many of whom responded to every letter. They helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity. They made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon. When Books Went to War is an inspiring story for history buffs and book lovers alike.

    I'm only a few chapters in but it is already fascinating. It's also hard to read because part of the story is what happened to books in Hitler's Germany and reading what was happening in Germany in the 1930s (which I was aware of but hadn't read recently because it would be like poking myself in the eye) is uncomfortably similar to what is happening in my country right now. Despite that, though, it is awesome reading about this national collective drive to get quality reading material into the hands of soldiers. I don't think anything like that could ever happen today. Our government is a kakistocracy that is incapable of telling the truth much less coming together for an altruistic effort like this.

    Watching

    I have finished up 2 series this week, Stranger Things and Crusade.

    I was watching Stranger Things purely for entertainment and didn't really have any complaints about it although I believe Best Son was waiting for me to finish it because he did and apparently wanted to share them. Steve and Dustin resolved their issues, which made me happy and I think it was mostly happily ever after for everyone. Except Barb. And Eddie.

    And Crusade! Man, that makes me sad. This series was so clunky in the beginning but by the last episodes things had evened out, characters were more fleshed out and I was actually interested in what was going to happen! Well, I still have the B5 movies to get through but I am sad for what Crusade could have become.

    I thought I was on a roll again with my Godzilla journey but then I found out that my next movie is 1969's Destroy All Monsters which I have seen referred to as the worst Godzilla movie of all. It is where the franchise took a hard turn into becoming kids' fare and not even good kids' fare. ...sigh... Trying to gird myself for sitting through this one.

    Well, that's about it for this week so I'll leave you with some more links!

    Link Lagniappe

    When I first started using Zonelets I had Disqus set up as a commenting system but it looked obnoxiously ugly and I ditched it. Some people are happy to not have blog interaction but I'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts you want to share! You can respond through my guestbook or email. If you found this link on Discord or the 32-Bit Cafe Discourse, you can message me there or leave a message on my Neocities profile page.