Stranger Things 5x01-04
Dec. 5th, 2025 11:37 pm( Random spoilers in no particular order )
Previously: uk.bookshop.org were selling a Tor ebook with DRM applied, which I only noticed after I had bought it, because all? Tor ebooks? are DRM-free? at the request of the publisher? Like, Hive applies DRM to them, but given that bookshop.org lets you filter for DRM-free, this... was surprising.
My initial support request for (1) an explanation and (2) any chance of a refund, realise this is totally on me though, ... got me an almost-immediate refund, which I was not expecting, and a very entry-level explanation of What DRM Is, which I sort of was. So I wrote back saying thank you very much, and also, Tor went famously DRM-free in about 2012, and they're definitely supplying this specific ebook to other retailers without DRM applied.
There was A Pause.
A day or two later I received a response from someone with "Senior" in their signature, thanking me for my patience and saying they were Investigating.
A few days after that I noticed that the ebook in question was now marked DRM-free: hurrah! ... but when I bought it, and clicked on the "yes please download my DRM-free ebook" button, nothing happened.
I did not write back in because I have been. preoccupied.
But a few days after that I tried again and this time the download did work! So hurrah for bookshop.org needing me to do much less assertive escalation than I'd been expecting, and also for noticing that something was still broken and Fixing It without me needing to get around to e-mailing in about it.
... the quick part of this note was going to be: I know there were Questions on my first post about Hey They're Doing Ebooks Now, about how you actually filter for DRM-free. As far as I can tell this isn't actually possible from the ebooks landing page, which seems A Pity, BUT when you search for something (which can absolutely be as vague as "science fiction"), the FORMAT dropdown lets you filter for DRM-free ebooks only. Obviously this is Not Ideal, in that one might actually like to browse All DRM-Free Ebooks, but it does exist as an option, where as far as I can tell it doesn't, at all, on e.g. Kobo. Hopefully this knowledge is helpful! And certainly The Above Saga has caused me to think sufficiently positively of them that I'm likely to default to them for my ebooks in future.
I ended up stepping in to read out the questions and answers for a Christmas quiz at work today, a colleague made it but then lost her voice so needed someone else to do the talking. She got two someone elses, R and me. We traded off asking the questions, and one of R's was the name of the Wallace & Gromit movie that came out on Christmas Day in 2024.
At which point I quietly muttered "two years ago already, gosh" and R said "Erik, that was last year."
Oh! Yeah! It was! It's only 2025 now!
"It has been a long year," he said kindly, and as he's basically acted as project manager for the reports I've written he knows as well as anyone how long my year has been at work!

Having determined that I'll need to buy my own lefse-making stuff, I finally remembered today to start my usual process of purchasing anything: asking V to do it for me, heh.
I sent them a list -- rolling pin, ricer, flat griddle, and what we call a lefse spatula the internet seems to call a lefse stick or lefse turner; I included a photo of one to make it clear -- and they did a great job; almost everything is on the way already. But it meant an afternoon looking at and thinking about the kinds of things I haven't in a while -- krumkake! which my grandma made when I was very little before declaring it too much work, which is fair enough but that means it took on near-mythical status in my mind; the other Minnesota Culture asserting itself stuff you find when you search for this because lefse has become a symbol of white Midwestern heritage. You can buy t-shirts that say "lefse ladym" modeled by someone holding a lefse spatula, but they don't sell the spatula, it's just a prop. There's shirts that say
Lefse&
Hotdish&
Pop&
Lutefisk
All these cultural markers lined up in a row. It's all both compelling and repulsive to me.
I've inherited a little money from the sale of Grandma's house -- despite all my attempts to refuse it, Mom insists that I buy something for myself with it. I'm going to make sure that she knows a bit of it is going on inferior versions of stuff that she never considered collecting for me because she refused to have anything to do with the house clearance, to make some point to her sisters that neither they nor I understand. An English friend perceptively pointed out "I'm guessing that sort of 'I'm having to buy a thing that you already had and (effectively) threw out' inflicts a very specific kind of midwestern sting." I could hardly have put it better myself. I'm not doing it to be passive-aggressive, though I imagine it'll be perceived that way.
Thinking about this all afternoon has led to feeling so immersed in things I miss so much. It's been kinda sad and tiring.