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cosmolinguistWe're back home!
The flight was about 40 minutes late and the train we tried to get home from the airport suddenly wasn't stopping at the stop we needed so we had to wait another half an hour for the next one. So we didn't get home umtil like 9:30, but that was just right to have a snack and a chat with V and then go to bed.
I'd put clean sheets on my bed before we left and I'm so happy to be between tbem tonight.
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It's hard to convince yourself to spend nearly half a grand on premium headphones, like the Sony WH-1000XM6, even if you consider yourself an audiophile. Not everyone can afford those prices, which is why the budget, mid-tier, and premium tiers exist. While the premium 1000XM6 headphones are over three times the price of the mid-tier Sony WH-CH730N, they're not three times as good. The Sony WH-CH730N are $128 (originally $179) right now, the lowest price they've ever been according to price-tracking tools, and they offer an amazing value for your money.
wwdn_feedIt’s only been like ten minutes since I found out, just before it hit the press, so I’m staggered and doing my best to process everything, while my phone is blowing up. There will be wonderful obituaries and reflections from so many people who knew him. I’m going to do my best to write my own, but that’s going to take a little bit.
For now, I want the world to know that Patrick wasn’t just my captain or my castmate; he was my friend and mentor. He made me a better actor, just by being in scenes with me. He never treated me like I was a kid; he always treated me like I was an equal, a fellow artist, at a time when I wasn’t mature enough to understand how precious that was.
I haven’t seen Patrick in a long time, our lives and schedules being what they are, but I thought about him almost every day. He rarely posted in our group chat, but when he did, it always made me smile. He always texted me back when I reached out to him directly, no matter what it was about, and he always — always — made me feel special.
I wish I really were a Traveler of all of space and time, so I could go to him, one final time, and tell him how much he means to me. I think he knew, but still.
There is so much more to say, and it’s going to take me some time to say it. Until then, I loved him, the same way I love the rest of the space family we shared. May his memory be a blessing.
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ALTFor Contober we’re watching a vidshow.
Taking place at conventions, vidshows are where a series of fanvids is shown in succession, usually in a 1-2 hour period. Many cons had premiere only vidshows, meaning the vids would be showcased for the first time at the convention, whereas other vidshows would combine premieres and already released vids. Some vid heavy cons would even have multiple themed vidshows. In the early days of vidding this was one of the few ways fans could share and gain appreciation for their work.
Once a con staple, the vidshow’s prestige has faded in recent years, with many young vidders not even knowing about them, and conventions struggling to get enough entrants to fill their rosters.
Have you ever watched a vidshow? Or entered one of your vids? Head over to the Fanlore page!
——–
We value every contribution to our shared fandom history. If you’re new to editing Fanlore or wikis in general, visit our New Visitor Portal to get started or ask us questions here!
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Patrick Stewart has passed away at the age of 86.
As far as comicbook casting goes he was perfect as Professor Xavier in the X-Men films. With this year’s ‘Doomsday’ it’s a role that spanned over twenty five years. He of course was also known for playing Picard and Star Trek and a plethora of other roles on stage, television and film.
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Contacts with cat pupils or neon colors can be fun, but are you sure you want to put a piece of plastic from a costume store into your eye? Experts, like those at the American Academy of Ophthalmology, warn against it. These non-prescription contacts are technically illegal in the U.S. (even though plenty of companies sell them anyway). The CDC warns that the risks include "eye sores and vision loss."
Cheap Halloween contacts tend to be one-size-fits-all, but the AAO points out that contacts should never be one-size-fits-all. A contact that is too large or too small for your eye can cause corneal abrasions, corneal ulcers, and can result in infections like keratitis. Infections can, in severe cases, lead to blindness. A 2017 report from the FDA found bacterial contamination in 27% of costume contacts.
If you do wear contacts (Halloween or otherwise), the AAO recommends keeping an eye out for symptoms like redness, swelling, pain, or excessive discharge. Seek care as soon as you suspect an infection. Your eyes are more sensitive to infections than other parts of the body, so be cautious.
Legally, contacts require a prescription, so if those colored contacts you're eyeing can be bought without showing a doctor’s prescription, they’re not legit. The real thing can be expensive, though: I found prices of $40 and up from lens.com, Discount Contacts, and Wicked Eyez.
These websites all let you order online, but you’ll have to provide your prescription information before you can check out. Fortunately, the Federal Trade Commission has ruled that providers must give you your contact prescription after a fitting so that you can take the prescription elsewhere. And they cannot charge you extra for this.
Once you’ve got the lenses, you have to know how to take care of them. If you wear contacts every day, you already know the drill. But if you’re just picking up a pair to use with a costume, here are the basics:
Wash your hands before handling the lenses.
Store them in contact lens solution, and keep the lenses and their case clean.
Don’t sleep or swim with them in.
And for Pete’s sake, don’t share them with your friends!
Just remember, the bloodshot look stops being cool after you take your zombie costume off.
lifehacker_feedThis week, Strava announced a new integration with Google Gemini, giving subscribers another way to understand their progress and get more out of their training. It builds on the company's recent launch with Claude, and it lets subscribers connect Strava directly to Gemini to get more contextual, personalized answers grounded in their own activity history.
Once connected, you can ask questions like:
"Am I getting faster at the same heart rate?"
"Can you give me a detailed analysis of how I performed in my last race?"
"How is my strength training impacting my running?"
Some important context here: Strava's AI "insights" have sort of sucked, and annoyed me, in the past. Athlete Intelligence (conveniently abbreviated as AI) is the Strava feature that writes text responses to your workouts. Strava calls these "insights," but as far as I can tell they mostly regurgitate the information from the workout description, sometimes with added errors. I've found AI fitness summaries largely useless, and Strava's version checks every box: It doesn't use enough context to understand what's going on, it presents generic advice as if it were personal, and it's overconfident in incomplete data. So, skeptical as I am, I gave Strava's latest Google Gemini integration a whirl. Here's what it does, how to set it up, and whether it's worth it.
The Gemini integration is rolling out to U.S. subscribers beginning now. To get started, open Personal Intelligence within Gemini, select Strava under connected apps, sign in with your Strava account, and authorize Gemini to connect.
The connection is optional and read-only. You choose whether to connect, and you can disconnect at any time from Connected Apps in Gemini. Worth knowing: The consent screen says Gemini will access workout activities, performance metrics, training plans, gear, clubs, and profile info, and that parts of your conversation, plus your name and email, may be shared with Strava and used according to its Privacy Policy.
The first question I asked was one of Strava’s examples, "Am I getting faster at the same heart rate?" Gemini said yes, I was seeing solid efficiency gains. Like many AI tools, it told me what I wanted to hear. I had to point out that heat and temperature are huge variables. When I steered the chat in that direction, Gemini, of course, agreed immediately ("you hit the nail on the head") and explained that my mid-September long runs happened in 75–84°F weather with higher humidity, which inflates heart rate, while October's cooler temperatures made the same effort look better. That's an important caveat the first answer left out entirely.
I then asked it to compare my past marathons, and in many ways, I had fun here. For instance, the suggested follow-ups prompted me to think of questions I hadn't put on my list, like comparing my weekly running volume and long-run frequency leading into different races in different years.
Unfortunately, the results weren't reliable at first. When I asked for a detailed analysis of every marathon-distance effort since 2019, Gemini said I had exactly one, the Marine Corps Marathon on October 25, 2026. In reality, I've logged at least eight. When I asked why it couldn't see them, it explained that its access is limited to my recent history, roughly summer 2026 onward, because of how pagination limits the number of past activities returned at once. It also offered a workaround: Give it specific dates and locations.
That workaround works, but it means you have to already know what you're looking for. And still, it wasn't consistent. In other answers, Gemini referenced my 2025 NYC Marathon and 2024 Philadelphia race, so the data's reach seems uneven. You need to be able to query older date ranges as directly and specifically as possible, and even still, double-check any numbers that matter to you.
I then asked "What am I doing right and what am I doing wrong as a runner?" After knowing the queries need to be so specific, I intentionally wanted to test a vague, simplistic question. The answer was, true to form, overly flattering—though I didn't disagree with the guidance itself. I need more speed workouts! I know this! I didn't need a chatbot to tell me, though maybe some other Strava user does. Gemini's suggestions (polarize training, add one dedicated threshold day) are sound, yes, but they’re also generic. Most recreational runners could glance at my Strava and spot the same strengths and weaknesses. Similarly, Gemini then set itself up for a slam dunk by prompting me to ask whether my easy runs were too fast. The answer: My easy days were happening at nearly my marathon pace (about 9:43/mi), and I should slow down by 45–90 seconds per mile, to roughly 10:30–11:15/mi. I completely agree. That being said, my big takeaway here remains the same: Don't confuse AI-generated advice as some newfound, personalized insight. It’s often the same conventional wisdom you already know, or could figure out with a tiny bit of research from a real, human source.
If you ask me—a human!—this is a classic case of using AI for rote tasks, but then saving critical thinking for your own human brain. Gemini didn't surface anything wildly insightful, and it skipped important considerations like the effect of heat on heart rate, until I raised them myself. But it pulled data faster than I could have by hand, and its follow-up prompts nudged me toward comparisons I might not have thought of.
For many users, the smartest approach may be to skip AI summaries and focus on raw data. After all, your training load, sleep duration, and heart rate trends are already perfectly actionable.
As with all things AI, it’s important to mind the gap between data and wisdom. So much wisdom gets lost—forfeited, even—when you blindly trust an AI coach. Make sure you aren’t offloading all the other skills you need as a runner and as a human, like your ability to listen to your body and maybe run a little slower in the heat, even when it makes your data look “worse.”
If you do use Google Gemini to analyze your Strava data:
Be specific about dates and locations when asking about older activities.
Push back. Ask about weather, terrain, and fatigue before accepting a flattering conclusion.
Treat the output as a fast data pull, not a personal coach.
And if the well-documented yet still murky privacy risks are worth it for you, that's your prerogative.
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Foggy, cold, and hardscrabble, the community of Snook’s Arm, Newfoundland, is the perfect spot for ocean-borne horror in Netflix's Below. This sense of place sets the series apart, though the characters who inhabit it are equally fascinating. Led by Josh Hartnett’s grounded performance as Calvin, the show has atmosphere for days, and a creepy and compelling story that effortlessly balances chills and deep emotional beats.
If you ate this show up like a voracious sea creature and you’re craving more slow-burn, deeply human horror (and you’ve already explored all the similar streaming series out there), it’s time to move on to feature-length terror, and there's one classic movie that fits the bill.
When it comes to kindred sea monster stories, Jaws is the obvious choice. Seaside setting? Check—a pre-glam Martha’s Vineyard stands in for Amity Island, with beautiful beaches and crashing waves to spare. A tight community under threat? Check—Amity Island feels like a very real place, and its citizens have concerns and grudges as legitimate as Calvin’s in Below. Shocks and frights? This is Jaws, a film that transformed the entire business of blockbuster movies, renowned to this day for its masterful depiction of a relentless natural force threatening an entire town.
The basic story also echoes Below's: When a young woman is killed by a shark during a night swim, Amity Island Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) tries to close the beaches to protect the public, but Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) refuses, as Amity Island depends on the tourist trade for its survival. After a young boy is killed, Brody teams up with shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) and oceanographer Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) to hunt the beast, and the three soon find themselves in over their heads as they discover how big and relentless the shark really is. Both stories share themes of economic necessity trumping safety in a changing world and concepts of a small group of people fighting a terrifying natural threat.
Like almost every horror film or series since 1975, Below owes a debt to Jaws in terms of storytelling and technique. From the isolated, ocean-centric setting (and monster) to the way Below shows you only flashes of its central terror, if you enjoyed the series, you will absolutely love the classic that influenced it. Stream Jaws on Netflix, or rent it on Prime Video.
Already seen Jaws, or rewatched it, and still in need of more terrifying movies in the same vein as Below? Here are a few more movies that you’ll love.
The Bay takes a different approach to its scares than Below—it’s a found-footage horror film. But it shares the remote, water-centric setting, the focus on a small community, and a story that pulls from the terror of a fundamental element—water—being polluted and corrupted. In the coastal community of Claridge, Maryland, citizens fall severely ill and begin dying in large numbers, sparking chaos. As investigators race to discover the source of the affliction, the carnage gets seriously gnarly. Just like in Below, the ultimate threat stems from the way people recklessly abuse the world we depend on for survival, and the local residents are center stage in the fight. Stream The Bay on Tubi or rent it on Prime Video.
One aspect of Below that resonates strongly with viewers is the human element; the Penney family’s internal tensions feel earned and real, and the way the larger community struggles with several existential crises is messy in a gloriously human way. The Host is also about a family struggling against a horrific, waterborne monster—when a mutant creature attacks a crowd near the Han River, Park Gang-du loses his grip on his young daughter, and she’s snatched up by the monster. But when Gang-du receives a phone call from his daughter telling him she’s still alive but trapped with the creature in the sewers, his family escapes quarantine, gears up, and goes after her, no matter the odds (or the corrupt government agencies standing in the way). Stream The Host on Kanopy or rent it on Prime Video.
Based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Dagon begins with four friends on a boat off the coast of Spain. When a storm wrecks the boat and injures one of them, a couple—Paul and Barbara—travel on foot to a nearby village to seek help. What they find instead is a terrifying place paying the price for worshiping a demon named Dagon in exchange for wealth and safety—but at a price that slowly rose, eventually transforming the villagers into something inhuman. Just like Below, the movie explores the choices communities make to survive, and the personal costs that aren’t always clearly understood. Stream Dagon on The Roku Channel or Tubi, or rent it on Prime Video.
If you loved Below’s foggy, liminal feel and the constant dread of what might be lurking in the mist or under the waves, unseen until it’s too late, John Carpenter’s classic is a must-watch. As the small coastal town of Antonio Bay approaches the centennial of its founding, a strange fog rolls in from the sea and envelopes the town. As the body count rises, the true story of the town’s founding and subsequent prosperity is revealed—and the long-deferred price for the crimes of the town’s ancestors is in the fog, determined to find some element of justice. Stream The Fog on Kanopy or Plex, or rent it on Prime Video.
If remote communities like Snook’s Arm are inherently creepy to you, check out Offseason. When Marie (Jocelin Donahue) learns that her mother has passed away and has been buried in Lone Palm, the isolated beach town where she grew up, she’s outraged—her mother was very clear that she didn’t want to be buried there. Marie travels to Lone Palm as tourist season ends, just a day before the bridge to the mainland closes for the year, which gives the town a liminal, nightmarish aspect familiar to anyone who’s lived in a tourist town during the offseason. As a storm moves in, Marie and her boyfriend find the townsfolk behaving quite strangely—and soon, it all whips up into a maelstrom of terror that fans of Below will appreciate. Stream Offseason on Hoopla or rent it on Prime Video.
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If you want reliable earbuds that cost less than tonight's dinner, JBL is a reliable brand to fall back on, with plenty of budget-friendly models that lack the bells and whistles of pricier options while still delivering on sound and battery life. One of the most popular picks is the wireless JBL Vibe Beam earbuds, which are down 40% at $29.99 (originally $49.95).
These earbuds aren’t reinventing the wheel, but they do check important boxes. They last up to eight hours without the charging case, and up to 32 hours with the case. Ten minutes of charging will get you a couple of hours of playback, and they have an IP54 rating, making them dust- and splash-resistant. The built-in mics work well in reasonably quiet rooms, but may struggle to separate your voice from loud background noise. Another perk is Find My Buds, which helps locate misplaced earbuds via a sound that’s played.
With 8 mm dynamic drivers, they deliver punchy bass that translates well to adrenaline-pumping workout music, and adequate vocal clarity for music and podcasts. Though the default tuning is relatively balanced, you can tweak it on the app’s equalizer to adjust it to your liking. They lack ANC and Bluetooth multipoint pairing, which isn’t surprising given the price point, but still pack in a solid amount of features and quality into $30, making the wireless JBL Vibe Beam earbuds a good value for everyday bargain earbuds that get the job done.
cosmolinguist - Wilkommen zurücklifehacker_feed - These Sony ANC Headphones Are on Sale for $128 Right Nowwwdn_feed - I wish I really were a Traveler of all of space and time.sage - Patrick Stewart, AO3, librariesconuly - Oh no…yourlibrarian in common_nature - Miller Road Parkmagid in agonyaunt - [NYTimes Social Q's] Getting sister out of bed in the morningfanlore_tumblr_feed - Terminology Thursday: Vidshowcyberghostface in scans_daily - NS: R.I.P. Sir Patrick Stewartconuly - Whatlifehacker_feed - Why Those Flashy Halloween Contacts Are a Bad Idealifehacker_feed - I Tested Strava's New Integration With Gemini, and I Have Thoughtsmrshamill - Busy, busy adultsconuly - Too hungry to eatusuallyhats in doctor_who_sonic - Thursday 29th October 2026soc_puppet in fictional_fans - Where Else Can I Find Your Fanworks?lifehacker_feed - If You Loved 'Below,' There's One Movie You Need to Watch Nextbrerrabbit in scans_daily - New Avengers (2013) #3lifehacker_feed - The JBL Vibe Beam Earbuds Are on Sale for $30 Right Nowprettyarbitrary - Promptober 2026 Day 29: Alone with the Villaintimeasmymeasurekrja
