mrissa | Network

Title: Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition
Author: Buddy Levy
Narrator: Will Damron
Published: MacMillan Audio, 2019
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 558,530
Text Number: 2102
Read Because: these boys be cold lemme tell you, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review:
The Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881–1884 was a meteorological study and Farthest North attempt with catastrophic results: only seven of the twenty-five men survived. I picked this one up blind, meaning I didn't even have prior knowledge of the expedition, much less have I read primary sources; and I really couldn't be happier. Levy is great man theory-prone, drinking some of that Arctic explorer kool-aid, and this tips slightly sentimental in a repetitious way; I also prefer my discussions of cannibalism to be more crunchy and less the stinger to the narrative.

But, frankly, these are only nitpicks, because this is the ideal tragic Arctic exploration narrative, in content and coverage. I'm struck by passing similarities to the loss of the Franklin expedition, namely: when evacuating in the Arctic, it's easy to make bad decisions in good faith, and those decisions have lasting consequences—we really don't need to posit complicated explanations for them. And boy, such consequences; and Levy affords them great nuance, offering room to the mundanity of human foibles, tender in descriptions of deaths by starvation and scurvy, frostbite and misadventure; no tedium, here, and yet the long, slow misery is emphatically realized. Fantastic read, and, unfortunately for my TBR, and expedition I want to read more about.

Current Music: A Body on the Step - American Murder Song

dailykos_feed

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2026/1/13/2363242/-Trump-team-issues-bonkers-threat-against-UK-over-Elon-Musk-s-creepy-AI?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

The State Department is issuing a blunt warning to the United Kingdom: Ban Elon Musk’s X, and the United States could retaliate.

The threat follows increased concern in Britain over a flood of AI-generated sexualized deepfakes circulating on X, including non-consensual images and material that could violate child-safety laws.

Elon Musk attends the Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) — Elon Musk, owner of X

U.K. regulators are now considering whether the platform ran afoul of the country’s Online Safety Act, a decision that could trigger a transatlantic standoff—with arguments for free speech on one side and growing pressure to curb AI-fueled sexual abuse on the other.

In an interview with GB News on Tuesday, the State Department’s Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, Sarah B. Rogers, suggested that the Trump administration is prepared to push back aggressively if Britain takes action against Musk’s platform.

“With respect to a potential ban of X, [U.K. Prime Minister] Keir Starmer has said that nothing is off the table. I would say from America’s perspective, nothing is off the table when it comes to free speech,” she said. “Let’s wait and see what Ofcom does, and we’ll see what America does in response. This is an issue dear to us, and I think we would certainly want to respond.”

Ofcom, the U.K.’s online safety regulator, is investigating whether any of that material produced and spread by X’s Grok AI chatbot crossed into illegal territory involving minors. The chatbot, developed under Musk, recently admitted to producing explicit images of infants.

But Rogers cast the inquiry less as a question of child protection than as a political fight, accusing the British government of pursuing “the ability to curate a public square, to suppress political viewpoints it dislikes.”

X, she added, has a “political valence that the British government is antagonistic to, doesn’t like, and that’s what’s really going on.”

When asked by Politico whether Rogers’s remarks reflect the Trump administration’s official stance, a U.S. Embassy spokesperson in London declined to soften them.

“Her remarks speak for themselves,” they said.

Rogers, a Trump appointee, also claimed that President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance are “huge champions” of free speech.

FILE - President Donald Trump and Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer exit Air Force One as they arrive at Royal Air Force Lossiemouth en route to Aberdeen, Scotland Monday, July 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer walks beside President Donald Trump in July 2025.

“Our leadership understands this because President Trump was himself a target of censorship,” she said. “President Trump was banned by Twitter—the old regime before Elon bought it.”

Of course, that posture doesn’t align with the Trump administration’s record.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has repeatedly attacked the press over unfavorable coverage and moved to punish critics across government and civil society, often under the banner of fighting bias or disloyalty.

British officials, for their part, reject the idea that the dispute is about suppressing political views. Through a spokesperson, Starmer said that it is “not acceptable” for AI-generated sexual images of “children and women” to proliferate on a major platform.

Behind closed doors, Starmer has been even more explicit. At a meeting with Labour lawmakers on Monday, he said: “If X cannot control Grok, we will—and we’ll do it fast, because if you profit from harm and abuse, you lose the right to self-regulate.”

The Labour Party announced this week that it plans to criminalize the creation of non-consensual sexualized images, extending legal responsibility not only to creators but also to platforms that provide the tools to generate them.

The State Department stepping in on Musk’s behalf isn’t a one-off. It follows a recent push by the Trump administration to enlist the tech billionaire’s help in restoring internet access in Iran—an effort cast as aiding protesters trying to get around a government-imposed blackout.

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Elon Musk in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) — Elon Musk stands beside President Donald Trump in the Oval Office during his stint as DOGE head in 2025.

It’s also not the first time that the department has intervened in matters concerning Musk’s business interests. According to The New Republic, U.S. officials pressured at least one foreign government to approve a license for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, in which Musk retains a massive financial stake.

House Republicans are also rallying behind Musk. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida said last week that she is drafting legislation to sanction the U.K. if X is banned.

Musk’s brief stint in Trump’s White House may be over, but his influence clearly is not. As head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, he pushed to dismantle and weaken agencies that regulate his companies, all while using his proximity to Trump to expand his reach abroad.

Now, as X confronts its most serious regulatory test to date, the State Department seems poised to step in yet again—this time to shield Musk’s business interests as the platform becomes increasingly saturated with AI-driven abuse.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2026/1/13/2363242/-Trump-team-issues-bonkers-threat-against-UK-over-Elon-Musk-s-creepy-AI?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

musesfool

I barely slept on Sunday night - maybe about 3 hours in total? - so I called out yesterday and went back to bed. I felt better but not great upon waking again after actually sleeping for another 2 hours, and spent most of the day zoned out on the couch, looking at tumblr. Last night I slept hard and today I woke up feeling much better, but ugh, sleep should not be so hard!

I know it's just January and winter but I can feel myself withdrawing and hermiting up, so if I'm late in responses to comments, that's why - it's definitely not you, it's me.

*

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: About a Girl - Nirvana

trobadora

In yesterday's poll, writing linearly is in the lead with 36%, but 23% of respondents are like me and write bits and snippets all over the place, then stitch them together. Here's how I put it back in 2008:

Backwards and forwards. Roundabout. A paragraph here, a sentence there, a half-scene, a turn of phrase somewhere out of joint. That's how it goes: like a puzzle, one of those with 10,000 pieces, but without much of an idea what the final picture will even look like. You have a few corner pieces, something solid, something to build on, but they may remain unconnected for the longest time. A bit of the picture somewhere in the middle - only it may turn out that it's actually in the upper left corner, once you see how things go together. And yet it does come together; in the end, it all fits, as a puzzle should.

That is the most amazing part: because unlike the puzzle, of course, those random bits of words and themes and structure aren't prefabricated to make sense. And yet they do.

I love writing. :D

Today's writing

Progress across three

fandomtrees treats! (I think those are the ones I can realistically finish, unless there's another delay. Or at least I hope I can!)

(I'm running late, so no question today.)

Tally

( Days 1-10 )

Day 11:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

daegaer,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

Day 12:

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

carenejeans,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

Day 13:

china_shop,

trobadora

Let me know if I missed anyone! And remember you can drop in or out at any time. :)

calimac

1. Scott Adams, having alerted the world that he had terminal cancer and not much longer to live, has died, according to an announcement released today. Adams was the creator of Dilbert, one of a short list of iconic newspaper comic strips that successively defined their eras. Dilbert was a startlingly satirical strip, a standing refutation of the notion that business, because it has to make a profit, is more efficiently run than government agencies. But like other strips, even iconic ones, it outlasted its own brilliance and became tired out and hectoring, but no more so than did Adams himself, who fell down the right-wing rathole, not just in supporting DT but by being disingenuously nasty about topics like racial identification and the Holocaust. The snark that once served him well had gone rancid.

2. Neil Gaiman. I don't have to elaborate on the grief that this once-esteemed author became revealed as a truly toxic sexual predator. But if you want an elaboration on his background, and on not the origins of his offenses but on how the seeds of what made him the kind of person who could do that could be found in even his most spectacular early successes, there is an astonishing book-length (over 70,000 words) online essay by Elizabeth Sandifer on Gaiman's career. It's full of digressions: it starts with a full explanation of the background of Scientology: Gaiman's father was a leading Scientologist, and it must have affected Gaiman, though it's not clear exactly how, and even once you get past that, there are plenty more digressions on the backgrounds of Tori Amos and others who appear in Gaiman's career. But the main thread is about his writings and his career as a writer. Sandifer's thesis is that Gaiman always wanted to be a celebrated big-name author, but unlike those who just dream of it, he worked hard to make his writings deserve that status, and there's much on his innovations and creativity. But there are also warnings, of which the echoes of the author in Ric Madoc of "Calliope" are only the most obvious. But then there was a turning point when Gaiman achieved that full celebrity status, around the time of American Gods and Coraline in 2001-2. It was then, Sandifer says, that the sexual abuse which had probably been going on long already became obsessive and even more toxic, and victims described the experience as if Gaiman were enacting a script. And, Sandifer says, his writing fell off and lost its savor at the same time: the cruelest literary remark in the essay is that The Graveyard Book "feels like the sort of thing a generative AI would come up with if asked to write a Neil Gaiman story."

duskpeterson

If you want to see Emor at its best, visit its City Court in session.

Actually, if you are staying with an Emorian acquaintance, it's unlikely you'll be given any choice about this. Emorians assume that everyone in the world is as enthralled with their laws as they are. Thankfully, Emorians are right to be proud of their law system, founded centuries ago by their Chara and council. This law system, known simply as the Chara's law, is one of the bulwarks of civilization in the Three Lands.

The best way to visit a law court is to prepare yourself beforehand by listening to an Emorian explain their law system to you. Any Emorian will do; even Emorian ditch-diggers know a good deal about the law. Indeed, even Emorian women do.

The City Court is not terribly formal, by Emorian standards, and the rules for behavior will be explained to you beforehand by the guards at its door. Wear your best clothes and be on your best behavior; otherwise, you can relax and enjoy the spectacle.

On your way out, be sure to visit the adjoining Law Academy, founded by the City Court in order to give advanced lessons in the law. The Academy does not try to compete with the traditional Emorian methods of learning law: tutoring, apprenticeships, and playing law-based games when one is a boy. Rather, the Academy provides supplemental education for Emorians who plan to apply for high positions in the law, such as at the palace. Most of the Academy students are between the ages of eight and sixteen, though students as young as four are accepted, if they plan to apply for a youth post, such as scribing or paging. On the other end of the scale, a few students are full-grown men who, because of unfortunate circumstances, missed out on the normal training in the law that virtually all Emorian boys receive. In recent years, many of these students have been former slaves. The Academy welcomes them all, even going so far as to pay the fees of any students whose slave service left them penniless.

[Translator's note: Emorians' obsession with the law is on full display in Law Links.]

dailykos_feed

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2026/1/13/2363093/-Trump-brags-he-s-Venezuela-s-president-but-he-s-overplaying-his-hand?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

President Donald Trump effectively declared himself “acting president of Venezuela” on Sunday, sharing on Truth Social a doctored image of his Wikipedia page displaying that title.

While we can add that to a growing list of arbitrary titles Trump has given himself since the start of his second term—such as dubbing himself “king”—the reality of Trump’s control over Venezuela is less regal.

Where the U.S. is touting its control of the South American country, there are reasons to believe that political instability is alive and well.

"We've had complete cooperation thus far from the interim authorities in Venezuela,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed on Fox News Monday.

However, colectivos—an unofficial paramilitary force supporting the regime—remain throughout the nation’s capital, Caracas, with plans to target Americans and those in support of the U.S. government.

Under Nicolás Maduro’s administration, colectivos used guns and motorbikes to patrol key areas, intimidating people believed to be aligned with the opposition. Once funded by former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, the groups have now turned to smaller-scale drug-dealing, extortion, and other avenues to fund their work, according to InSight Crime.

On Saturday, the U.S. State Department published a warning for Americans to get out of the country.

A woman sits in front of a store in the Petare neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Cristian Hernandez) — A woman sits in front of a store in the Petare neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 7.

“There are reports of groups of armed militias, known as colectivos, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence of U.S. citizenship or support for the United States,” the press release read. “U.S. citizens in Venezuela should remain vigilant and exercise caution when traveling by road.”

The Venezuelan government, however, denied this.

“Venezuela is in absolute calm, peace, and stability," the government reportedly said in a statement, adding that these claims were "fabricated accounts aimed at creating a perception of risk that does not exist."

As for why colectivos haven’t made a move on Americans, a source connected to the opposition inside Venezuela told Daily Kos they believe the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV, is waiting for the right moment to push out opposing forces.

Daily Kos’ source speculates that the armed groups haven’t begun targeting Americans because they’re waiting for a shift of power or for Congress to strip the U.S. military of the option to respond with force.

“Every time they notice pressure from the United States, they launch a campaign of strategies that helps them buy time until the administration changes its stance or a new administration comes in,” they told us.

Since Trump ordered the military to swoop in and capture Maduro on Jan. 3, there have been polarizing opinions on the president’s decision to intervene in Latin American politics.

Of course, the U.S. has a long history of sticking its nose in the country’s affairs, including a reported plan to fund a coup to overthrow Chávez. And much of the U.S.’s involvement, including present-day meddling, can be traced back to the country’s vast oil reserves.

Despite Trump calling himself Venezuela’s president, the reality is he doesn’t even have control of his main motivation for invading the country.

During a Friday roundtable between Trump and oil executives, ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods said the country is “uninvestible.”

“Significant changes have to be made to those commercial frameworks, the legal system, there has to be durable investment protections, and there has to be a change to the hydrocarbon laws in the country,” Woods said during the meeting.

Evana, an oil tanker, is docked at El Palito port in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, Sunday, Dec. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix) — Evana, an oil tanker, is docked at El Palito port in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, in December 2025.

ExxonMobil’s hesitancy is justified given that the country’s leaders have previously seized their operations.

Still, as expected, the president has rejected their perspective and has threatened to leave the oil giant out of the deal.

But with Trump swooping in at the start of 2026 to remove Maduro, he has found himself facing the same governing party that was there to begin with.

Trump claims that elections in Venezuela will eventually take place. And despite not publicly backing conservative opposition leader María Corina Machado in a presser following Maduro’s capture, a top-to-bottom regime change isn’t off the table, it seems.

On Thursday, Trump will meet with Machado, who has offered her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump, though it is nontransferrable (obviously). It’s unclear if this meeting signals a warming to the idea of backing Machado. Given the U.S.’s historical support of the opposition, it wouldn’t come as a surprise.

However, so much of this hinges on Trump maintaining any semblance of control. And no matter how many times he calls himself a king or a president of a nation other than the U.S., the reality of his control, or lack thereof, remains.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2026/1/13/2363093/-Trump-brags-he-s-Venezuela-s-president-but-he-s-overplaying-his-hand?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

dailykos_feed

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2026/1/13/2363019/-Cartoon-ICE-ICE-plushie?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

A cartoon by Clay Jones.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2026/1/13/2363019/-Cartoon-ICE-ICE-plushie?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

juushika

With great effort do I attempt to catch up on the many books I failed to review in 2025, including: the worst(?) of the autumnal picture books I grabbed in the season.

Title: Stumpkin
Author: Lucy Ruth Cummins
Published: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2018
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 50
Total Page Count: 558,070
Text Number: 2099
Read Because: more spooky? picture books, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: I get prickly about picture books that anthropomorphize inanimate objects in uncomfortable/guilt-inspiring ways, and ones that insist the unwanted/unchosen are actually special.* This manages to be both, in a way that almost (no pun intended) stumps me: don't feel sorry that no one bought a flawed pumpkin, because the proprietor carved the unsold merchandise into a jack-o'-lantern himself. Enjoyable art, with sketchy, near monochrome backgrounds and vibrant orange pumpkins. Picture books are largely harmless even if they leave me replete with questions, so it kind of doesn't matter that this one just feels weird; but, thematically, it feels a little weird!

* I get the intent! It's the conservative executions that I don't like, erasing legitimate experiences of otherness.

Title: The Yellow Leaves Are Coming
Author: James Gladstone
Illustrator: François Thisdale
Published: Red Deer Press, 2023
Rating: 1.5 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 558,100
Text Number: 2100
Read Because: okay let's just call this a search for autumnal picture books, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: I think I like this take on a cycle-of-the-seasons picture book, grounded in incredibly specific details, wistfully slipping through time and space. But I barely noticed the text because this is the new ugliest picture book I've ever seen, and it's wildly distracting. See that cover? The "how do face work?" rendered in a kind of uncanny smoothness, disjointed from the environment? This is one of the better panels. Avoid, avoid.

Title: Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn
Author: Kenard Pak
Published: Henry Holt and Company, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 558,130
Text Number: 2101
Read Because: autumnal picture books, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: I never have much to say about non-narrative picture books; they serve a function and this feels like it works, rooting itself in a number of evocative, personal details which make the changing season identifiable and evocative. Beautiful! And ... that's it; nothing to grab or move me.

Current Music: Meditation - Koda

maevedarcy posting in

pinchhits

Event: Holly Poly 2025
Event link:

holly_poly
Pinch hit link: Details and claims in this post
Due date: January 25

#2: Riverdale (TV 2017), Glee (TV 2009), Person of Interest (TV)

#5: The Elementalists (Visual Novel), Heart of Battle - Fay Ikin, Havenfall is for Lovers (Visual Novel)

12: Nosferatu (2024), IT (Movies - Muschietti), Hellraiser (Movie 2022), Hemlock Grove, Skinwalkers (2006), crossover - Fandom

13: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn, Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena (Anime & Manga), Miraculous Ladybug, Bakuage Sentai Boonboomger (TV), Original Work

14: Dangan Ronpa Series, Grisaia Series (Visual Novels), Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Related Fandoms, 裸執事 | Hadaka Shitsuji | Naked Butlers (Visual Novel), Clannad

15: Haikyuu!!, Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types, Wind Breaker (Anime), Saiki Kusuo no Sai-nan | The Disastrous Life of Saiki K., Bungou Stray Dogs, Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga), While You Were Sleeping (TV)

lightofdaye

Title: Resolutions
Word Count: 2 x 100
Rating: PG
Characters & Pairing: Albus Severus Potter, James Sirius Potter
Content: Crush, dialogue, banter, brotherly love.
Disclaimer: The characters, settings and HP Franchise as a whole are owned by JKR and not by me. I make no profit from writing this piece of fanfiction.
Summary: Al and James have suggestions for each other.
A/n: Unbeta'd. Written for

hp_nextgen100's Prompt #343: "Resolution"

( Resolutions )

cosmolinguist

My counselor always starts with asking me how my week has been, since we last talked.

On every level, it has been A Lot.

But it was actually really good to talk about it all: on the macro level of course Minneapolis, my friends there and seeing fascism happen in places familiar to me, and then on the micro level angelofthenorth moving out, and just seeing her thriving after six months in our goofy lovely home.

I can't fix everything but I'm so glad to have the personal security needed to donate to mutual aid, to drag someone else out of a situation so similar to the one I needed saving from five years ago.

snopes_feed

Posted by Rae Deng

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-alcohol-ban-prohibition/

The president's alleged social media post ended with: "We don't need hangovers — we need GREATNESS. LET'S MAKE AMERICA SOBER AGAIN!"

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-alcohol-ban-prohibition/

china_shop

After the Waiting (10,195 words, Guardian, outsider POV on the SID & on Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan's new relationship, post-canon)

The Best Thing for Everyone (8,726 words, Time of Fever/Unintentional Love Story, Go Hotae/Kim Donghee, bridging the gap between the two canons, angsty ending with hope for the future)

Breakage and Repair (5,247 words, Guardian, Chu Shuzhi/Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, post-canon, angst --> get-together)

( My 2025 fanworks and modding )

( The Meme (for 2025) )

leiacat

On the final day of my 40s one feels compelled to look back on decades past.

I said farewell to my 30s with a lovely bubbly - a farewell worth repeating. On my 40th birthday my first directing project opened, defining my decade with deeper immersion into theater. (This year we're two weeks away from the opening, and I can't wait for that show to be seen, too, it's been so great working on it.)

My 20s were departed from with less ceremony, but I did commence the tradition of weekend-around-birthday dim sum, I'd not realized I've been doing it quite that long! Within a week a cat would dwell in my house - the only pet I'd ever had. The decade would involve finishing grad school, having a wedding, getting a job. What people do in their 30s, right? I danced and did more theater.

Without the benefit of internet it's hard to rewind further back, but by aggregate pattern, one would assume my 20th was celebrated much like any other birthday, at home with family and then-boyfriend Sam - my recollections of the 21st are much more vivid, and the 20th was likely just another year. I'd graduate, move to Maryland for a job, Sam would join me, I'd lose the job and spend some time adrift before I figured out what's next. I would fall in with convention tech crowd and historic dance crowd, fine additions to my life both (and through them, theater crowd, though that took a while to ramp up).

10th likely would not have called for over-much ceremony either, I was not a model of popularity. Shortly I'd move from my childhood home to see it demolished, and then from my not-so-home country to see it fall apart too - the first of these left me far more maudlin than the second. Along with the usual teenage milestones I'd discover online communities.

And here we are. Notwithstanding my proneness to melancholy, it's not been the worst of runs so far.

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/puente-romano

A bridge built across the Guadiana River by the Romans in the 1st Century AD now serves as a pedestrian connection across the river. It's seen everything from the Romans to the Visigoths to the Moors. Restoration work was done in the 7th century and the 17th century.

These days it's a quiet, though over 700m long, connection between the Alcazaba and the far side of the river.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/puente-romano

in_the_pipeline_feed

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/mrna-vaccines-what-s-adjuvant

I believe that mRNA vaccines are a real advance in the field, but there’s no doubt that we’re in the early days of their use. And given the complexities of the immune system, it’s not surprising that we haven’t worked out all the details - if you really want to get down to it, we don’t have all the details on any therapy involving the immune system at all. Which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t use them! Let’s get even more real, and say that the same statement applies to small molecule drugs as well, whether they have an immune component or not. We can see the outcomes, we can measure risk/reward and safety/efficacy, and make informed decisions about when to use them and for what.

I’m beating on this point so hard, as I’m sure people will have realized, because of the violent hostility of the current US federal health authorities towards vaccination, which is generally given an extremely annoying won’t-someone-think-of-the-children spin about how gosh, we haven’t worked out all the details yet so why are we running cruel experiments on helpless pediatric patients, etc. This is how you can easily weaponize the “precautionary principle” into making sure that you take no actions at all because you can’t understand their full consequences down to the last detail (so you can’t be sure that nothing bad is happening and if you can’t be sure than how can you in good conscience and so on).

This new paper, for example, has more details about how mRNA formulations induce such useful immune responses. It’s already been noted that the lipid nanoparticles involves in packing the mRNA payloads have some inherent adjuvant activity, which is convenient. Non-native mRNA certainly has such activity, too, but in the vaccines the use of modified nucleosides turns down a lot of the innate immune system activity that would otherwise kick in. Almost all conventional vaccines have some sort of adjuvant to stimulate the immune system and make the antibody-eliciting effects more prominent (indeed, some of them would be almost useless without it at the dosages administered). I’ve written about adjuvants before, but there’s obviously a lot more to say about them because again, there’s a lot that we haven’t uncovered about their modes of action.

The LNP and mRNA components are both playing key roles in these vaccine effects, and I’m going to reproduce the graphical abstract of the paper to give you some idea of what’s going on. Well, perhaps. One thing it’s sure to do is make you glad that you’re not an immunologist, because I assure you that this is a very simplified picture as well. What you’re seeing are effects on dendritic cells (the “DC”) in the middle, and it turns out that both components of the vaccine are acting on these but through different pathways. To add to the fun, both involve CD4-bearing T cells and the associated T-follicular helper (Tfh) cells, but again through different pathways.

This research group has evidence that the nucleoside-modified mRNA used in the vaccines does not completely make them invisible to the innate immune system’s pattern-recognition-receptors that are always watching for foreign mRNA. Those are also why the mRNA constructs used in the vaccines need to be well purified to remove double-stranded species, which will really trip those receptors for you if present. It turns out that the purified, nucleoside-modified mRNAs do set off a Type I interferon response that had not been worked out before, and the authors propose that there must be a less-characterized pattern recognition receptor or perhaps a yet-undescribed mechanism of action for existing ones that causes this. They haven’t found either one yet, but their evidence strongly suggests that something like one of these has to be out there.

But the responses to both the lipid nanoparticles and the mRNA species are important here, and when things go correctly they actually reinforce each other. There are other experiments in the paper that show that the LNP response is a local one, almost entirely occurring in the nearly draining lymph node to the vaccine injection site, instead of a system-wide effect. It doesn’t even look as if you have to inject them at the same time or in any physically coupled formulation (as we do) - the effect works either way. But since we need the LNPs to protect the mRNA and to get good uptake into cells, it’s certainly good that they’re such mechanistic partners. This could well help to explain the failures of many other plausible mRNA delivery systems that were tried in the earlier years of such research.

The hope is that as we study these systems more closely we can work out how to hit this balance by design rather than by trying years of things that don’t work as well (or at all!) We’ve got a ways to go before we get to that point, but learning all the tiny switches and dials of the vaccine immune response is going to be a very worthwhile endeavor.

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/mrna-vaccines-what-s-adjuvant

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girlmeetstrouble

Chapter 12: ( Read more... )

Comment: I honestly think Fleming phoned this book in! The thugs behave idiotically, Bond’s heroic rescue of Viv involves him dragging her across the ground by her feet (he couldn’t have picked her up?!) and a man who in other books has dealt with hoards of bad guys is suddenly telling her he’s 007 in case he doesn’t survive dealing with these two incompetent thugs?! And Viv is rather quick to decide Bond isn't like the other men she's been involved with, when she's only just met him ...

Chapter 13: ( Read more... )

Comment: Well, Viv is very much both in the action and in trouble in this chapter! Bond is … less efficient than I would’ve expected, but it’s a long time since I read the other books.

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ysabetwordsmith

Discovery shows early humans were much more advanced hunters than previously believed

On stone arrowheads left in a South African rock shelter, researchers found 60,000-year-old traces of plant poison.

A team working in Sweden and South Africa analyzed quartz tips from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

A residue on one artifact can be a fluke, but repeats on older and newer arrowheads are harder to dismiss.

*laugh* Hominids helped wipe out 98% of land animal body mass. What did scientists think, all they were doing was running up and stabbing megafauna until it dropped dead? Yeah, no. Arrow poison. Channel traps, pit traps, cliff traps. Fire. Collecting scat to frame one predator for encroaching on another predator's territory, then watching them shred each other and sneaking up to dispatch the weakened loser.

"Work smarter, not harder" has been the hominid strategy for millions of years.

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ysabetwordsmith

... is scheduled to appear at 4PM Eastern time, which is 3PM Central time -- so 10-15 minutes from now. It's a planned variation, no need to worry.

Snowflake Challenge: A pair of ice skates hanging on a wood paneled wall. Pine boughs with a few ornaments are stuffed into the skates.

Current Mood: busy

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juushika - Book Review: Labyrinth of Ice by Buddy Levy, narrated by WIll Damrom
dailykos_feed - Trump team issues bonkers threat against UK over Elon Musk’s creepy AI
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trobadora - Write Every day 2026: January, Day 13
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in_the_pipeline_feed - mRNA Vaccines: What's the Adjuvant?
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Page generated Jan. 14th, 2026 09:40 pm

Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

The stories are made up, but the problems are real.

Network

Book Review: Labyrinth of Ice by Buddy Levy, narrated by WIll Damrom

Trump team issues bonkers threat against UK over Elon Musk’s creepy AI

i do hope you have a dime

Write Every day 2026: January, Day 13

men who sank their own reputations

FIC: The City Court and Law Academy (Tempestuous Tours)

Trump brags he's Venezuela’s president—but he's overplaying his hand

Cartoon: ICE, ICE, plushie

Book Reviews: Stumpkin, Cummins; The Yellow Leaves..., Gladstone; Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn, Pak

Holly Poly 2025 Pinch Hits Due January 25th

Double Drabble: Resolutions (Albus Severus & James Sirius)

Taking stock

Sober up on rumor Trump posted about banning alcohol, bringing back Prohibition

End-of-year wrap-up meme for 2025

50 - 1

Puente Romano in Mérida, Spain

mRNA Vaccines: What's the Adjuvant?

The Spy Who Loved Me - chapters 12 & 13

Early Humans

Snowflake Challenge

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January 2026

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