Bonus: Whatever Happened to the Conglomerate?
Feb. 26th, 2026 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcampbell1000 posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
scans_daily
An extra JLI-adjacent feature inspired by your…yes, YOUR…comments on the Conglomerate in Justice League Quarterly #1! ( Really, it's almost as if YOU wrote this! Or at least as if you told ChatGPT to do it! )
The Wedding Ritual Where Brides Wept in Song
Feb. 26th, 2026 02:24 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
jstordaily_feedIn the novel China Men, author Maxine Hong Kingston colorfully depicts a traditional ritual held before weddings among women in her mother’s village community:
“Dressed in white, MaMa sat behind her bedcurtains to sing-and-weep. ‘Come and hear the bride cry,’ the village women invited one another. ‘Hurry. Hurry. The bride’s started singing-and-crying.’”
Kingston’s writing captures the moving but emotionally confusing scene of the kuge (crying song), or bridal lamentation, which was traditionally performed up to the 1960s in China. The practice “allowed women to express the inexpressible—for example, complaints toward parents or protests against androcentric Confucian institutions,” ethnologist Fei-wen Liu explains.
The mother in China Men, for instance, bewails how her own family has “kept me working at your house” and delayed her marriage, while also fretting over the possibility of wedding an unfaithful husband, who will “pick a plum blossom as I become a prune.” But the bride is not the only performer. Kingston’s story notes that the audience “called out ideas” for lyrics and “punctuated her long complaints with clangs of pot lids for cymbals.”
Conducting fieldwork in Hunan province’s Jiangyong county, Liu finds that kuge rites there feature similar collaboration between the bride and others, usually women. Their responses, called peiku 陪哭 (to cry along with) or yiku yipei 一哭一陪 (one cries, the other accompanies), reveal that kuge “transcend[s] simple lamentation,” writes Liu.
Rather, peiku allowed women to reflect on their own lives and share their feelings—turning kuge into “a body of social texts that all participants may ponder and interact with.”
For her research, Liu consulted Xiao and Huan, two sisters born in the 1930s, who performed songs such as the peiku that Xiao had sung at her own wedding. “[T]o my surprise, Xiao did not stop once Huan began to sing, and the two voices remained concurrent throughout the performance,” Liu observes. She notes “the dialogic format ensures the aesthetic qualities of kuge and promotes mutual inspiration.” This is because “one had to wail while listening to and incorporating the interlocutor’s utterances into her succeeding lamentation” to present a successful performance.
More to Explore
Marriage and the Maiden Name
December 17, 2025
While many women trade surnames they had at birth for their husbands’, some hold on tightly to the former, a tradition famously established by Lucy Stone.
In another peiku interaction, Huan played the role of a young bride consoling an older aunt who has joined in to bemoan her lack of sons. The lyrics uttered in such a scenario enabled the bride to show that she was aware of community norms and etiquette. As Liu explains, “Required demonstrations of such knowledge were considered educational in that they compelled the bride to cultivate the skill and wisdom needed to cope with real-life difficulties the bride might have to deal with later.”
At the same time, Xiao’s laments about her childlessness in this peiku rendition show how women listening to the bride could also contribute their own experiences of kelian (misery) to the kuge. “From the interlocutor’s perspective, peiku performance prompts self-reflection, especially regarding kelian,” says Liu, adding that kuge participants might have “hoped that the negative sentiments would be reformulated into positive ones via articulation.”
Weekly Newsletter
While practiced for centuries across different ethnic groups in south and southwestern China, the practice of kuge has become “nearly lost” in the last half-century. After the rise of communism in China, traditions such as kuge were regarded as primitive and feudal, and heavily discouraged. In fact, one family friend “considered the kuge ‘backward and of affectation’ and thus refused to lament at her own wedding,” Liu reports. “[E]ven if elders try to initiate wailing at weddings, the young brides now fail to follow.”
On top of that, not all kuge included peiku, especially in communities where brides hailed from different villages and did not have the rapport to lament together. The songs performed by Xiao and Huan thus offer “rare and invaluable” insights into a disappearing world. “Incorporated into the wedding ritual, bridal lamentations gave shape to peasant women’s conception of adulthood in the reformulation of the individual’s social position and cultivation of social wisdom,” Liu concludes.
“Through these transformations, the bride was readied to face a brand new world and all possible life situations.”
The post The Wedding Ritual Where Brides Wept in Song appeared first on JSTOR Daily.
Five Science Fiction Stories About Investigating Enigmatic Artifacts
Feb. 26th, 2026 10:04 amjames_davis_nicoll
"What is this thing, and where the heck did it come from?" is a great way to start any story!
Five Science Fiction Stories About Investigating Enigmatic Artifacts
yin and yang, today's edition
Feb. 26th, 2026 06:52 amsistawendyBad: Kansas makes trans people unpersons overnight.
Good: a sweet late-night text message from Blue Moon Lady.
Good: two months until I leave for surgery in San Francisco. It can't happen soon enough.
Good: a sweet late-night text message from Blue Moon Lady.
Good: two months until I leave for surgery in San Francisco. It can't happen soon enough.
eprouvette
Feb. 26th, 2026 07:28 amprettygoodwordeprouvette (ay-proo-VET) - n., a fixed-elevation mortar formerly used to test the strength of gunpowder.
Used from the 17th to mid-19th century -- put in a standard shot and standard charge, and see how far the standard mortar flings it. Also done with small-arms powder with a standard pistol, but the mortar is better known form. From French éprouvette, from éprouver, to test, from Old French esprover, reconstructed Vulgar Latin form *exprobare, from Latin ex- + probare, to try/prove.
---L.
Used from the 17th to mid-19th century -- put in a standard shot and standard charge, and see how far the standard mortar flings it. Also done with small-arms powder with a standard pistol, but the mortar is better known form. From French éprouvette, from éprouver, to test, from Old French esprover, reconstructed Vulgar Latin form *exprobare, from Latin ex- + probare, to try/prove.
---L.
Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall
Feb. 26th, 2026 08:37 amjames_davis_nicoll
What better cure for melancholy than to serve under a captain whose obsessed pursuit of a leviathan will surely doom all involved?
Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall
Are these words misspelled/misspelt most?
Feb. 26th, 2026 11:33 amacommonlanguage_feedThe people at WordUnscrambler.pro sent me a list of "the most misspelled (BrE misspelt*) words" for the UK. I get a lot of these "we did this thing so that your blog will give us free advertising," and I usually ignore them, but I'll give this one some attention—partly because they sent a US list to Language Log (who published it), so I can do some comparison.
But I first have to gripe a bit. Here's the methodology:
We analyzed Jan 1, 2025 - Dec 17, 2025 search data from Google Trends for "How do you spell" and "How to spell".
That's not a method for discovering the "most misspelled words." That's a method for discovering the most looked-up spellings. This is the kind of (BrE) jiggery-pokery makes me hate headlines. If you think to look up a word, then you might be insecure or curious about its spelling. But that's keeping you from misspelling it. I'm betting that when they're not looking up spellings like these, those people are out in the world (like the rest of us) are confidently spelling accommodation with one m and letting spellcheck catch it for them (or not).
Nevertheless, the WU.pro folks showed admirable linguistic sensitivity in not declaring the Americanisms on the list "misspelled." Instead, they note repeatedly that both the US and UK variants "are correct".
United Kingdom's most
misspelled wordsqueried spellings:1. Colour - 109 200 searches - Both colour and color are correct.
2. Favourite - 82 900 searches - Both favourite and favorite are correct.
3. License - 59 000 searches.
4. Diarrhoea - 58 700 searches - Both diarrhoea and diarrhea are correct.
5. Jewellery - 56 400 searches.
6. Definitely - 53 000 searches.
7. Auntie - 50 400 searches - Both auntie and aunty are correct.
8. Weird - 48 000 searches.
9. Business - 46 800 searches.
10. Behaviour - 40 800 searches - Both behaviour and behavior are correct.
11. Neighbour - 39 600 searches - Both neighbour and neighbor are correct.
12. Country - 29 000 searches.
13. Queue - 22 800 searches.
14. Gorgeous - 22 600 searches.
15. Necessary - 23 000 searches.
I've added the blue to show which ones are also on the US top 10, which I've copied at the bottom of this post.† (Not sure why the UK got a top 15 and the US a top 10. Nor why necessary has more searches but is lower on the list than queue.)
Some of these are definitely difficult—others, like country, surprised me. But let's have a little look at whether people do misspell them, using the Corpus of Global Web-Based English. (I'm using that one even though it's 13 years old now because web-based English is more likely to include misspellings than the published writing in other comparative corpora.) I won't try to cover all of them, just the ones that strike me as transatlantically interesting.
US/UK variants
Where there are US/UK variants, it's often the case that the corpus has included American writing and tagged it as GB because it's on a British website (or vice versa). For that reason, I've (in another post) used -or/our spellings as a diagnostic for how reliable the country tagging is in GloWbE. So, it's not necessarily the case that BrE writers are mispelling them.
-or/-our
In that vein, the following graph shows that there's probably more AmE writing on UK websites than BrE writing on AmE websites—which is not so surprising, since there are presumably about 5 times more US than UK writers on the internet and text from American wire services and other companies might be reprinted wholesale on UK sites.
 |
| rates of -our versus -or spellings in GloWbE |
But the other thing to take from the our/or chart is: Canadian spelling is in crisis. The (standard Canadian) -our spellings only just outnumber the -or ones. Meanwhile, the Canadian Prime Minister recently got into trouble for using British -ise spellings that are not traditionally Canadian.
licence/license
License is a tricky one because it's the correct spelling for BrE, when it is a verb. But it is licence in BrE when it is a noun (s in AmE for both). The first chart here shows a lot of (incorrect for BrE) license as a noun in the GB corpus—but that will, again, be partly due to American writing on British websites, rather than British writers misspelling it. It's hard to know how much each factor contributes.
 |
So, more interesting from a misspelling standpoint is licenced, which is incorrect in all Englishes, but about 5% of the UK spellings. License is definitely a word that Britons misspell. |
I was surprised not to see practice/practise on the UK misspelling list. You can read more about that at an older post, if you'd like to.
Diarrhea/diarrhoea
This one seems to have little to do with US/UK confusion. Diarrh(o)ea is just difficult and unpleasant for everyone. And personal: everybody's misspelling it their own ways:
(The crossed-out ones are names that happened to be caught on my search for "diarr*a". I don't envy them their diarr-a names.)
jewellery/jewelry
Jewellery is not marked with "jewelry is also correct" in WU.pro's list, but jewelry is the correct spelling in AmE. The AmE/BrE spelling difference is surely adding to the confusion about how to spell it, but the word is just difficult in its own right, with that double L and three-syllable pronunciation (=jewelry). Here's a shortened list of spellings in GloWbE (there are lots more one-off spellings), where the older, now-AmE spelling jewelry appears more than 1/3 of the time on the UK sites, but some definite misspellings make their way in too.
The later jewellery spelling seems to have derived from jeweller + y ('the stuff that the jeweller makes'—analogous to pottery) while jewelry derives from jewel+ry ('products created from jewels'—analogous to pastry, balladry). In 1901, the OED commented (about BrE usage):
In commercial use commonly spelt jewellery; the form jewelry is more rhetorical and poetic, and unassociated with the jeweller. But the pronunciation with three syllables is usual even with the former spelling.
So, we might consider jewelry to be AmE and old-fashioned BrE.
Words that are just hard to spell
Weird
It's been my perception that weird is more a problem in UK spelling, and GloWbE bears that out a little bit, with wierd a greater proportion of the UK forms (about 3%) than the US (about 2%):
country
Most people don't seem to have a problem with spelling country, but those who misspell it are not more likely to be British:
queue
The word is much more common in BrE, but hard to spell everywhere. And yet, people seem to mostly get it right. Leaving off the final e sometimes happens, but really not much:
 |
I'd expected to find the word spelled like its homonyms cue and Q, but there aren't many such misspellings. For the following chart, I searched for queue, queu, que, Q and cue, but none of the queu spellings showed up in the 'in a' phrasing:
The Q spelling might be an abbreviation, rather than a misspelling. But it's striking that the cue homonym is absent from the British entirely. These people know a queue's a queue.
I'm going to leave it there! But feel free to comment on these or the other words on the lists.
* The fact that misspelled/misspelt has two spellings complicates the old joke: Which word is always misspelled? Misspelled! (Or is it misspelt?) Anyway, I have an old post on -ed versus -t past tenses.
†America's most misspelled words:
- Definitely – 33 500 searches.
- Separate – 30 000 searches.
- Necessary – 29 000 searches.
- Believe – 28 500 searches.
- Through – 28 000 searches.
- Gorgeous – 27 000 searches.
- Neighbor – 25 500 searches.
- Business – 24 200 searches.
- Favorite – 23 000 searches.
- Restaurant – 22 500 searches.
Book Review: Post Captain
Feb. 26th, 2026 08:04 amosprey_archerAt the beginning of Post Captain, right on the cusp of a big sea battle, peace is inopportunely declared. Fortunately for Jack Aubrey, he is extremely flush with prize money, so with his particular friend Stephen Maturin he rents a country house, enters local society, and meets a family of pretty sisters (plus one beautiful young widowed cousin).
I had just settled in for a reverse Austen novel, told from the point of view of the naval captain rather than his young lady, when Jack’s prize agent absconds with all his money. Jack, eleven thousand pounds in debt, flees to the continent with Stephen in tow - just in time for war to begin again!
This is all in the space of about four chapters. At this point I concluded I had better not settle in for anything at all, as we were clearly in for an ever-shifting picaresque novel.
In this book:
Stephen disguises Jack as a bear so they can flee from hostile France to still-neutral Spain.
Jack is subsequently so ill that Stephen has to nurse him back to health, which takes place entirely off page, because O’Brian could not care less about hurt/comfort.
Other things O’Brian can’t care less about? Spy plots. Stephen has become a hotshot spy for British intelligence and spends months in Spain gathering intelligence, which entire trip O’Brian disposes of in three paragraphs.
However, Stephen’s spy shenanigans allow O’Brian to skip the entire sequence during which Jack gets not-engaged with a girl whose mother won’t let her enter an engagement with a man who is eleven thousand pounds in debt, but emotionally they’re basically engaged.
So if O’Brian has cheerfully skated over hurt/comfort, spying, and romance, what IS he writing about?
Well, at one point Stephen declares that he has “a horror of appearing eccentric,” and asks worriedly whether it would make him look weird to practice swordplay on deck. (It will not, the captain of the marines assures him.)
(A few chapters later Stephen, the man who has a horror of appearing eccentric, shows up on Jack’s new ship wearing a wool onesie and carrying a glass hive of bees. The bees promptly invade the morning cocoa.)
Stephen and Jack almost have a duel but then it just kind of fizzles. They seem to have simply forgotten about the duel without, at any point, formally deciding not to duel.
The debt collectors catch up with Jack but fortunately he’s out with a bunch of officers from his ship so they turn the tables on the debt collectors and impress at least two of them into the navy. Ha-HA, take that debt collectors!
Oh, and obviously we DO finally have a sea battle at the end. We may not need spying or hurt-comfort but we MUST have a sea battle.
I had just settled in for a reverse Austen novel, told from the point of view of the naval captain rather than his young lady, when Jack’s prize agent absconds with all his money. Jack, eleven thousand pounds in debt, flees to the continent with Stephen in tow - just in time for war to begin again!
This is all in the space of about four chapters. At this point I concluded I had better not settle in for anything at all, as we were clearly in for an ever-shifting picaresque novel.
In this book:
Stephen disguises Jack as a bear so they can flee from hostile France to still-neutral Spain.
Jack is subsequently so ill that Stephen has to nurse him back to health, which takes place entirely off page, because O’Brian could not care less about hurt/comfort.
Other things O’Brian can’t care less about? Spy plots. Stephen has become a hotshot spy for British intelligence and spends months in Spain gathering intelligence, which entire trip O’Brian disposes of in three paragraphs.
However, Stephen’s spy shenanigans allow O’Brian to skip the entire sequence during which Jack gets not-engaged with a girl whose mother won’t let her enter an engagement with a man who is eleven thousand pounds in debt, but emotionally they’re basically engaged.
So if O’Brian has cheerfully skated over hurt/comfort, spying, and romance, what IS he writing about?
Well, at one point Stephen declares that he has “a horror of appearing eccentric,” and asks worriedly whether it would make him look weird to practice swordplay on deck. (It will not, the captain of the marines assures him.)
(A few chapters later Stephen, the man who has a horror of appearing eccentric, shows up on Jack’s new ship wearing a wool onesie and carrying a glass hive of bees. The bees promptly invade the morning cocoa.)
Stephen and Jack almost have a duel but then it just kind of fizzles. They seem to have simply forgotten about the duel without, at any point, formally deciding not to duel.
The debt collectors catch up with Jack but fortunately he’s out with a bunch of officers from his ship so they turn the tables on the debt collectors and impress at least two of them into the navy. Ha-HA, take that debt collectors!
Oh, and obviously we DO finally have a sea battle at the end. We may not need spying or hurt-comfort but we MUST have a sea battle.
thank you!
Feb. 26th, 2026 07:52 ammarcicatThanks, Be a Goldfish, for 8 great weeks of creativity! Time to go do the feedback form and send more comments!
(hmmm... March approaches... time for a new challenge???)
(hmmm... March approaches... time for a new challenge???)
SGA: Do Over by crysothemis
Feb. 27th, 2026 12:37 ammific posting in fancakeFandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Rating: Explicit
Length: 18,910
Content Notes: No AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: crysothemis on AO3, nny (villainny) on Audiofic Archive
Themes: Inept in love, Friends to lovers, First time, Humor, Pining
Summary: John never sleeps with anyone twice.
Reccer's Notes: Rodney (who's attracted to John) bumps into a few women, and then Ronon, leaving John's quarters. He clumsily asks John about these goings on, and mostly accidentally challenges John to have sex with him (because why not with Rodney if everyone else gets to?). It doesn't go swimmingly so Rodney demands a do-over, then another do-over, and another, because there's always something wrong with their encounters. This is partly as Rodney's bisexual and he mistakenly thinks John must be as well, and Rodney also manufactures "mistakes", until they're both entirely hooked and John's joining in with the pretense enthusiastically. It's hot, funny, and clever - a great read.
Fanwork Links: Do Over
And there's a podfic by nny
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Rating: Explicit
Length: 18,910
Content Notes: No AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: crysothemis on AO3, nny (villainny) on Audiofic Archive
Themes: Inept in love, Friends to lovers, First time, Humor, Pining
Summary: John never sleeps with anyone twice.
Reccer's Notes: Rodney (who's attracted to John) bumps into a few women, and then Ronon, leaving John's quarters. He clumsily asks John about these goings on, and mostly accidentally challenges John to have sex with him (because why not with Rodney if everyone else gets to?). It doesn't go swimmingly so Rodney demands a do-over, then another do-over, and another, because there's always something wrong with their encounters. This is partly as Rodney's bisexual and he mistakenly thinks John must be as well, and Rodney also manufactures "mistakes", until they're both entirely hooked and John's joining in with the pretense enthusiastically. It's hot, funny, and clever - a great read.
Fanwork Links: Do Over
And there's a podfic by nny
The Siege of Cuba [war/WWIII, US/MX/CA/RU, Patreon]
Feb. 26th, 2026 06:39 amsidereaCanonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1897060.html
[Content Advisory: info that may be US government classified and controlled unclassified info leaked to news outlets, within. Actual status is unclear to me.]
Cuba has been effectively under siege by the US since at least January.
The US has cut off all Cuba's access to fuel imports. The situation is getting increasingly desperate. And a bunch of things just happened today. Yesterday, by the time I post this.
The US seized Venezuela January 3. Venezuela had been one of Cuba's two primary sources of oil, and once the US had control of Venezuela, the US halted shipments of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. Cuba's other main supplier of oil was Mexico, and on Jan 27, Mexico announced it was suspending oil shipments to Cuba. The Mexican president was evasive when asked point blank if the Trump administration was pressuring them into it, but Mexico has a critical trade deal with the US coming due for renegotiating, and dare not antagonize Trump.
Two days later, Jan 29, Trump issued an EO threatening any country that ships oil to Cuba with tariffs.
Apparently, there has been, since around that time, an undeclared US naval blockade of Cuba, to prevent oil shipments from getting through. The Trump administration hasn't admitted it, but Jan 23, Politico published a report that three anonymous sources in the Trump administration said that the administration was considering a "total blockade on oil imports" to Cuba, and a few days ago the NY Times published an analysis of ship movements in the Carribean indicating that there was indeed a naval blockade.
Cuba has received no foreign oil since its last shipment from Mexico Jan 9th.
As of Feb 3, the Financial Times was reporting that a consultancy was reporting that Cuba had "15 to 20 days" of oil left. Feb 5, the UN Secretary-General spokesperson issued a statement about a humanitarian disaster looming in Cuba.
Cuba of course did what it could to ration oil, but without enough of it, things began to fall apart. They started running out of fuel for cars, public transit, trucks to ship in food, garbage trucks to take the trash, and tractors to harvest crops. Cuba primarily generates electricity from oil-burning power plants so the electrical grid started failing and they started having blackouts. People have been cooking with whatever they can burn in the streets; there is no reliable refrigeration. Of course, they are also running out of food, and have difficulty accessing water. All elective surgeries have been canceled.
Feb 8, Mexico sent a delivery of humanitarian aid – 814 tons of food and hygeine supplies – to Cuba, to arrive later that week. This doesn't violate the US sanctions. Probably.
Feb 9, Cuba notifies all airlines that fly to Cuba that Cuban airports are running out of fuel and they will no longer be able to refuel in Cuba; Air Canada announces it's suspending flights to Cuba and sending empty flights to rescue Canadians in Cuba. Canada has been the largest source of tourists to Cuba, and the tourism industry is one of Cuba's main sources of foreign currency, without which it basically can't engage in international trade.
Also Feb 9, Mexican president Sheinbaum publically called the US's sanctions on Cuba "unjust" ["muy injusto"] for how they impacted the people of Cuba and pledged to keep finding a diplomatic solution with the US to get to ship Cuba oil.
Feb 13, the Ñico López oil refinery in Havana, Cuba, had a fire. The Cuban government reports that it was swiftly contained, and that the refinery continues to function, but that an investigation was opened into its cause.
Feb 22, shipping analysis firm Windward announced that they'd detected a Russian tanker (subsequently identified as The Sea Horse by Kplr) headed from the Mediterranean to Havana, likely carrying oil, putting it on a track to directly challenge the US Navy's blockade. It is due to reach Cuba in early March.
Feb 23, Canada announced it would be sending some sort of relief supplies to Cuba, but was cagey about just of what those supplies would consist.
Today, Feb 25:
The commenter VisualEconomik EN on YT argued today that Russia is unlikely to go to the mat for Cuba, for a variety of reasons, including that Russia is economically over-extended by its war in Ukraine; he also contends that Russia and China have no more patience for Cuban mismanagement and despite the tactical military advantage having turf within 100 miles of the US coastline, they're kind of done with dealing with Cuba's government. As to whether this is true, I can't say, but it sounded reasonable. This is good news if true, because otherwise, if either wanted to back Cuba against the US, this could be the match that sets off the powderkeg.
( News sources and further reading below, in chronological order of publication [6,690 words] )
This post brought to you by the 226 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
[Content Advisory: info that may be US government classified and controlled unclassified info leaked to news outlets, within. Actual status is unclear to me.]
Cuba has been effectively under siege by the US since at least January.
The US has cut off all Cuba's access to fuel imports. The situation is getting increasingly desperate. And a bunch of things just happened today. Yesterday, by the time I post this.
The US seized Venezuela January 3. Venezuela had been one of Cuba's two primary sources of oil, and once the US had control of Venezuela, the US halted shipments of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. Cuba's other main supplier of oil was Mexico, and on Jan 27, Mexico announced it was suspending oil shipments to Cuba. The Mexican president was evasive when asked point blank if the Trump administration was pressuring them into it, but Mexico has a critical trade deal with the US coming due for renegotiating, and dare not antagonize Trump.
Two days later, Jan 29, Trump issued an EO threatening any country that ships oil to Cuba with tariffs.
Apparently, there has been, since around that time, an undeclared US naval blockade of Cuba, to prevent oil shipments from getting through. The Trump administration hasn't admitted it, but Jan 23, Politico published a report that three anonymous sources in the Trump administration said that the administration was considering a "total blockade on oil imports" to Cuba, and a few days ago the NY Times published an analysis of ship movements in the Carribean indicating that there was indeed a naval blockade.
Cuba has received no foreign oil since its last shipment from Mexico Jan 9th.
As of Feb 3, the Financial Times was reporting that a consultancy was reporting that Cuba had "15 to 20 days" of oil left. Feb 5, the UN Secretary-General spokesperson issued a statement about a humanitarian disaster looming in Cuba.
Cuba of course did what it could to ration oil, but without enough of it, things began to fall apart. They started running out of fuel for cars, public transit, trucks to ship in food, garbage trucks to take the trash, and tractors to harvest crops. Cuba primarily generates electricity from oil-burning power plants so the electrical grid started failing and they started having blackouts. People have been cooking with whatever they can burn in the streets; there is no reliable refrigeration. Of course, they are also running out of food, and have difficulty accessing water. All elective surgeries have been canceled.
Feb 8, Mexico sent a delivery of humanitarian aid – 814 tons of food and hygeine supplies – to Cuba, to arrive later that week. This doesn't violate the US sanctions. Probably.
Feb 9, Cuba notifies all airlines that fly to Cuba that Cuban airports are running out of fuel and they will no longer be able to refuel in Cuba; Air Canada announces it's suspending flights to Cuba and sending empty flights to rescue Canadians in Cuba. Canada has been the largest source of tourists to Cuba, and the tourism industry is one of Cuba's main sources of foreign currency, without which it basically can't engage in international trade.
Also Feb 9, Mexican president Sheinbaum publically called the US's sanctions on Cuba "unjust" ["muy injusto"] for how they impacted the people of Cuba and pledged to keep finding a diplomatic solution with the US to get to ship Cuba oil.
Feb 13, the Ñico López oil refinery in Havana, Cuba, had a fire. The Cuban government reports that it was swiftly contained, and that the refinery continues to function, but that an investigation was opened into its cause.
Feb 22, shipping analysis firm Windward announced that they'd detected a Russian tanker (subsequently identified as The Sea Horse by Kplr) headed from the Mediterranean to Havana, likely carrying oil, putting it on a track to directly challenge the US Navy's blockade. It is due to reach Cuba in early March.
Feb 23, Canada announced it would be sending some sort of relief supplies to Cuba, but was cagey about just of what those supplies would consist.
Today, Feb 25:
- Trump announced a plan to allow US companies to sell Venezuelan oil to Cuban businesses, but not the government.
- It has emerged that Marco Rubio (US Sect of State) is in talks of some sort with Raúl Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro.
- There was an exchange of gunfire between Cuban border forces and 10 heavily armed people in a speedboat with Florida tags who opened fire on them when discovered just off the shore. According to the Cuban government, the assailants were all Cuban residents of the US; four were killed, six wounded and taken for medical care. Cuban authorities have accused them of being terrorists. The commander of the Cuban vessel was also wounded in the initial attack from the speedboat.
The commenter VisualEconomik EN on YT argued today that Russia is unlikely to go to the mat for Cuba, for a variety of reasons, including that Russia is economically over-extended by its war in Ukraine; he also contends that Russia and China have no more patience for Cuban mismanagement and despite the tactical military advantage having turf within 100 miles of the US coastline, they're kind of done with dealing with Cuba's government. As to whether this is true, I can't say, but it sounded reasonable. This is good news if true, because otherwise, if either wanted to back Cuba against the US, this could be the match that sets off the powderkeg.
( News sources and further reading below, in chronological order of publication [6,690 words] )
This post brought to you by the 226 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
C. Pegasi (by orphan_account) (Teen)
Feb. 27th, 2026 12:14 ammific posting in stargateficrecShows: SGA
Rec Category: threesomes+
Characters: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay/Ronon Dex
Categories: M/M/M
Words: 1600
Warnings: no AO3 warnings apply
Author on DW: n/a
Author's Website: n/a (orphan_account)
Link: C. Pegasi on AO3
Why This Must Be Read: This is a glimpse into an AU where (I think) the expedition have been cut off from Earth, and have also suffered the city being invaded. They've survived it all, but they have scars, both physical and psychological, and this is very much hurt/comfort as John, Ronon, and Rodney take comfort in each other. As the title suggests, they've also developed a secret crop that helps them survive by trading it in the Pegasus markets. Interesting and evocative.
( snippet of the fic under here )
Rec Category: threesomes+
Characters: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay/Ronon Dex
Categories: M/M/M
Words: 1600
Warnings: no AO3 warnings apply
Author on DW: n/a
Author's Website: n/a (orphan_account)
Link: C. Pegasi on AO3
Why This Must Be Read: This is a glimpse into an AU where (I think) the expedition have been cut off from Earth, and have also suffered the city being invaded. They've survived it all, but they have scars, both physical and psychological, and this is very much hurt/comfort as John, Ronon, and Rodney take comfort in each other. As the title suggests, they've also developed a secret crop that helps them survive by trading it in the Pegasus markets. Interesting and evocative.
( snippet of the fic under here )