1 oz Banhez Mezcal (Peloton de la Muerte)
1 oz Brandy Sainte Louise (Courvoisier VS)
1/2 oz Punt e Mes
1/2 oz Giffard Banane du Bresil (Tempus Fugit)
Stir with ice and strain into an old fasioned glass.
Two Fridays ago, I uncovered a set of online recipe flashcards for the Chumley House in Fort Worth, Texas, and I was attracted to the Social Vampire that I was able to find on their March 2025 menu. The Social Vampire has the brandy-mezcal combination accented with Punt e Mes that the 1910 Cocktail does except with banana instead of Maraschino liqueur. Moreover, the banana liqueur-Punt e Mes duo worked excellently in the Banana Manhattan with rum as a base spirit, so I was excited to try it here. In the glass, the Social Vampire sought out the nose with vegetal, fruity, and smoke aromas. Next, caramel and grape notes on the sip drained into Cognac richness, vegetal, bitter herbal, banana, and smoke flavors on the swallow.
The reason for this part 2 about VPNs in China is that so many good responses to my inquiries about VPNdom in China came pouring in just after the first post went out. Also, there is such a wide variety of different viewpoints and experiences that you cannot expect there to be a single standard out there. One thing has become very clear to me, and that is that the Chinese government wants to keep people on their toes and resort to a lot of self-policing. This is common government policy in China, not just with regard to the internet, but to many aspects of social and political life.
For an up-to-date comprehensive primer about VPN usage in the PRC, I recommend that you read carefully this article: "Are VPN's Legal in China?" Not really. It's a tricky business. You can be heavily fined and get in real trouble if the internet police catch you with one, especially if you use it to read / write something the CCP disapproves of.
It's a catch-22. If the government catches you using an expensive, good VPN that will enable you to read most of what's on the global internet, you could be in deep do-do with the authorities. If they catch you using a cheap VPN, it's pretty much useless because you can't use it to go to the places you want to go to. The government won't mind, and they will monitor everything you do on the internet.
To give you an idea of what VPNdom is like in China, I will compile half-a-dozen or so of the most interesting communications I received. Two things to keep in mind:
1. All of my informants are elite, privileged, highly educated, and many of them are foreigners. They are in no way representative of the vast majority of the Chinese population, most of whom have no idea of what a VPN is.
2. When it wants to, for whatever reason, the government can shut down the whole internet completely, as it did during the worst times of the dynamic zero COVID lockdowns, and as it did during the white paper protests in November 2022.
As with part 1 of this series, I will not reveal the identity of my informants, except for two professional legal experts.
An American scholar at Chinese research institute:
The situation is that with a VPN (and there are many companies offering China-friendly options) one can access everything in China that’s available in the west sans fail. All those apps you mention, including TikTok (Chinese version Douyin), are completely accessible, as are US university email servers.
An American professor at a top tier American university in China:
Access depends on the kind of VPN one is using. For the one we use at XXX Shanghai (Cisco) we can access everything, including YouTube. I suspect most university VPNs will work as well.
An American professor at another top tier American university in China who for many years told me that no matter what VPN he used, he couldnt access Language Log:
Basically I would say that with a good VPN you can access almost anything, but wouldn't go so far as to say everything, at least not in my experience.
As I've asked around, people note that it does depend on how good the VPN is, and I've heard that people may need to switch VPNs from time to time to stay ahead of the game. There may at times be other factors; for example, one person here mentioned even with a VPN she had trouble with some sites, but attributed it to the fact that she is not using an IPhone.
Here on campus our access is unusually good, and accessing things like Google, U-Tube and so forth is not a problem; I wouldn't say there are many sites I can't reach. But there are a few things that I haven't been able to access even from on campus, and unfortunately the Language Log posts have been on this list.
But, as a post-script…. I hadn't tried accessing Language Log posts for a while because it never worked, but I just now gave it a try using our current VPN and – for the first time here – it worked! (There was a post on Taiwanese I had particularly wanted to read.) So, maybe, at least for the moment, things are better than I thought.
in general, most of my correspondents in China have told me that they cannot access Language Log.
A Taiwanese professor at a top university in Hong Kong:
Based on my experience in Hong Kong, I haven’t encountered any difficulties accessing Google or YouTube. However, TikTok and ChatGPT aren’t available without a VPN. (I’m currently using ChatGPT via VPN.) Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit are all accessible here without issue.
From what I’ve heard from my students in Mainland China, they need to purchase high-quality VPNs to reach these platforms. Many even subscribe to several and rotate between them, since VPN access can sometimes be disrupted. Interestingly, they refer to VPNs as “tīzǐ 梯子” (ladders), and they describe it as ‘climbing the ladders’—pá tīzǐ 爬梯子—to see the world. I find that metaphor both poignant and powerful.
A Chinese graduate student visiting her family in China for the summer:
About the internet situation in China: with a good VPN, you can usually access pretty much any international platforms or social media like YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, Discord, etc. I’ve been using VPNs for years, and once it’s connected, the interne
A Chinese language teacher at a top tier American university:
I just checked around about this matter. The answer I received is that, if you have a GOOD VPN, yes, you can see anything on the internet in China. But it has to be a GOOD one.
When I was in China last summer, I didn’t buy a VPN, because it is too mafan ("troublesome"), so I don’t have any personal experience about how VPNs work in China.
A college application adviser / coach in a major Chinese eastern seaboard city:
As for the VPN issue, my VPN can watch YouTube and ANY website. It really depends on what VPN you are using and how expensive your VPN is. My VPN is relatively expensive, over 500 RMB/ year (to ensure the connectivity and keep in touch with you haha!). I guess that student who had a lot of trouble with her VPN is probably using a free or very cheap one.
A Cantonese professor at a top Hong Kong university:
From my experience, if I have a sim card from Hong Kong, and as long as I don't use free wifi on the Mainland, I am able to use WhatsApp, Facebook, receive hku email, and probably browse Youtube, as well. I don't even have to use VPN. But if you don't have a HK sim card, you will need to use VPN to do this all.
An M.A. graduate from Penn:
I have been using a VPN program provided by a Japanese company, which includes numerous nodes, including the US and Hong Kong, and even access to Chat-GPT. However, I have encountered issues when using it on Apple devices with iOS systems. Some foreign websites fail to load properly. Google and Twitter work normally, but other websites frequently display errors. Devices with Windows and Android systems do not experience these issues.
These problems began about two weeks ago and have existed until now. I am not sure if they are related to the Beidaihe meeting, the big military parade forthcoming in Beijing, and so forth.
Donald Clarke, a specialist on Chinese law:
Officially authorized VPNs (there is such a thing) are permitted, but of course they will not be secure. Neither providing nor using an unauthorized VPN is, strictly speaking, legal; people have been punished for both kinds of offenses. Of the two, providing an unauthorized VPN is much more serious; using an unauthorized VPN less so. If you're wondering about yourself, I have never heard of a foreigner being punished for using an unauthorized VPN, even though it is deemed illegal. As a professor from a prestigious university, you run a very low risk.
I'm told that Astrill provides the most reliable service. This is fine if you're just concerned with getting outside the Great Firewall and not concerned about security or confidentiality. Since China has the technical capacity to detect VPN use and block it, any VPN that is not blocked is, I suspect, operating with permission (even if it's not officially authorized). And that makes me wonder why the state would permit it.
This is a good summary of the situation by William Farris, former general counsel for Google for the greater China region (here and here).
In conclusion, using a VPN in China is pretty much hit-or-miss, cat-and-mouse. As with so many things in China, the regulations are inexplicit; they are designed to keep you guessing.
Are VPNs legal in China? Sort of, but not really (at least not for the full purposes of which they are intended). It's part of what is called the gray zone / area, a concept that is also used in diplomacy / warfare.
Bottom line: One of the most strongly blocked websites in China is Language Log. I've heard from many people in China, even those with "good" VPNs and those who love to read LL when they're someplace which has a free and open internet, that it is not available to them in China.
Another meeting with Putin? Why? Do you need to fluff him some more?
Look, I know you admire Putin as the dictator you desire to be, but you aren't getting anything out if this meeting except a distraction from
EPSTEIN FILES, EPSTEIN FILES, EPSTEIN FILES
which ain't happening, sugar.
Putin wants the Soviet Empire back. Period. The only thing that will make him happy is having Eastern Europe returned to him and Western Europe cowering in fear. He'll get to them later. Having you kowtowing to him is just gravy on biscuits.
Stop it. You're an embarrassment and a child molester. No Nobel prize for you, loser.
Unpacking the attack took work because much of the JavaScript in the .svg images was heavily obscured using a custom version of “JSFuck,” a technique that uses only a handful of character types to encode JavaScript into a camouflaged wall of text.
Once decoded, the script causes the browser to download a chain of additional obfuscated JavaScript. The final payload, a known malicious script called Trojan.JS.Likejack, induces the browser to like a specified Facebook post as long as a user has their account open.
“This Trojan, also written in Javascript, silently clicks a ‘Like’ button for a Facebook page without the user’s knowledge or consent, in this case the adult posts we found above,” Malwarebytes researcher Pieter Arntz wrote. “The user will have to be logged in on Facebook for this to work, but we know many people keep Facebook open for easy access.”
This isn’t a new trick. We’ve seen Trojaned .svg files before.
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the North Dakota Monitor. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.
Millions of Americans own the rights to oil and gas underground. When they’re approached by an energy company to lease out those rights, they’re offered a cut of the revenue, called a royalty.
“Royalties saved our place,” said James Horob, a farmer in northwest North Dakota, who used oil royalties to rescue his family’s farm from bankruptcy in 2008 and replace equipment that had been auctioned off. “We’re lucky to have what we got.”
However, the royalty income that mineral owners like Horob get can depend in part on the state where they live. In North Dakota, estimates show that in recent years companies have been deducting hundreds of millions of dollars annually to help cover the costs incurred once oil and gas leave the ground on their way to being sold. North Dakota officials have not stepped in to help royalty owners, even though the state, in its own leases, has explicitly prohibited oil and gas companies from taking deductions from government royalty payments since 1979, as the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica reported this month.
“It’s tough to think that there isn’t some better solution out there than what we currently have,” said Aaron Weber, a Watford City-based attorney who represents mineral owners in North Dakota.
In contrast to North Dakota, at least seven oil-and-gas-producing states have taken either legislative or judicial action to restrict the costs that can be deducted from royalty owners’ checks. Here are the key ways North Dakota differs from these other states when it comes to protecting the interests of royalty owners:
The Debate in North Dakota
North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong has called the oil and gas industry the “No. 1 driver of our economy” in the state. The industry contributed $32 billion in oil and gas taxes to state and local governments between 2008 and 2024, according to the Western Dakota Energy Association, which advocates for energy-producing communities. That same study found that more than 50% of all local tax collections are tied to oil and gas.
Oil and gas companies owed the state’s private mineral owners, like Horob, an estimated $4.6 billion in 2023 before deductions, according to North Dakota State University research.
Deductions from that royalty income — which can vary greatly by company and mineral owner — are deeply contentious in the state: Companies say they’re withholding transportation and other expenses that should be shared with royalty owners; the owners say those “postproduction deductions,” as they are generally known, shouldn’t be permitted in most circumstances.
The energy industry says the postproduction deductions, which began surging about a decade ago, reflect changes in the oil business. Oil, discovered in the state in 1951, used to be sold primarily at the well site. Now, oil and gas are often sold farther away, and companies incur costs to process and transport the minerals. The companies say this enables them to fetch a better price, benefiting the royalty owner as well. The industry also attributes an increase in deductions to regulations added in 2014 to reduce natural gas flaring, requiring companies to make new investments.
A gas flare in Williams County, North Dakota, in June
(Sarahbeth Maney/ProPublica)
Owen Anderson previously worked for North Dakota’s regulatory agencies and helped draft language to prohibit companies from taking deductions from royalty payments owed to the state. Anderson, a law professor who studies the energy industry, called the issue “a big, big deal.”
Armstrong declined to comment.
How Courts Have Addressed Oil and Gas Royalties
Around the country: State supreme courts in Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and West Virginia have determined oil and gas companies are responsible for the costs that make the commodities “marketable.” That means there are limits on the expenses that companies can pass on to royalty owners after the minerals leave the ground. Those expenses may include removing impurities, gathering the products in central locations, and transporting the oil and gas to where it will be sold.
Still, the costs that companies can deduct from royalties vary by state, depending on how states define when a product is marketable.
West Virginia provides royalty owners the most protection from deductions, the result of state Supreme Court of Appeals decisions in 2001 and 2006. In those cases, the court found that companies cannot pass on costs to the owners unless a lease explicitly allows it. This matters because many leases across the country were written before shifts in the industry led to more extensive deductions, so most early leases don’t explicitly mention them.
“The default is, you cannot take deductions unless they’re specifically agreed to,” said Tom Huber, the leader of West Virginia’s royalty owner association. The 2006 court decision “basically says if there’s ambiguous language, you go on the side of the royalty owner because the company constructed the lease,” he said.
That decision also determined that deductions cannot be taken unless leases specify which costs can be shared and lay out how the deductions will be calculated. Rulings in 2024 and 2025 confirmed the court’s stance.
Courts in Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma also have placed limits on what costs can be deducted from royalty payments. Those courts have determined that companies must make the oil and gas “marketable” before costs can be deducted from royalties. Each state uses different criteria to determine at what point in the process the commodities become marketable.
Courts in other oil-and-gas-producing states have taken a legal approach that is more friendly to the industry. Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and others have determined that companies can deduct costs incurred between the minerals’ extraction and when they are sold unless there is lease language to the contrary.
That is also true in Pennsylvania. But in 2015, the state’s attorney general cracked down on a company, Chesapeake Energy, alleged to be taking artificially excessive deductions. The attorney general’s lawsuit, prompted by complaints from landowners, was resolved with a $5.3 million settlement for royalty owners and an option to receive royalties moving forward without deductions. The company did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement.
In North Dakota: As is the case in Texas, Louisiana and some other states, the North Dakota Supreme Court has sided with companies. In 2009 and 2021, the court ruled that royalties, in most cases, should be based on the value of the oil and gas when the minerals are extracted from the ground. Costs incurred between when the minerals are extracted and when they are sold can be shared proportionately between the oil company and the royalty owner, the court found. Companies can deduct these costs unless a lease clearly specifies otherwise.
I hope that the people in North Dakota wake up and realize how much money should be in their pockets instead of industry’s pockets.
—Tom Huber, the leader of West Virginia’s royalty owner association
Josh Swanson, a Fargo-based oil and gas attorney who is involved in multiple pending lawsuits contesting deductions, said he’s concerned companies will impose even more “excessive” deductions unless courts place limits on what the companies can do.
“Operators are going to continue to be very aggressive in the amounts they’re taking for postproduction costs until a court tells them they’ve overstepped and gone over the line,” he said.
In responses to questions from the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica, officials from three energy companies that operate in North Dakota said they follow the language in the leases when determining what costs they can deduct from royalty payments. Older leases often don’t mention deductions, however.
How Lawmakers Have Addressed Oil and Gas Royalties
Around the country: Some state legislatures have passed laws that limit postproduction deductions. Laws in Wyoming and Nevada, passed in 1989 and 1991, respectively, prohibit companies from taking deductions for specific expenses incurred soon after extraction, such as gathering the commodities from well sites to get them to central hubs.
In Michigan, a law passed in 1999 allows companies to deduct from royalty income only two types of expenses — transportation and some gas treatment costs — unless a lease explicitly allows for other reasons.
The West Virginia Legislature, meanwhile, has helped royalty owners with what it called “oppressive” leases. Many West Virginia mineral owners receive royalties from “flat rate” leases signed as long as a century ago that provide owners a few hundred dollars a year instead of a percentage of the revenue. Calling those leases “unjust,” West Virginia lawmakers passed a measure in 1982 that guarantees owners at least 12.5% of the revenue, effectively overriding the original leases. A 2018 amendment requires that postproduction deductions not be taken from this royalty.
West Virginia’s law ensuring a minimum royalty for those leases is enforced by state regulators, who will grant new drilling permits only if the company files an affidavit promising to adhere to the law.
Huber said his state’s legislative and judicial branches have historically tried to protect landowner and royalty owner rights while encouraging the growing natural gas industry.
“It sounds like North Dakota doesn’t have that, and that’s a shame,” Huber said. “I hope that the people in North Dakota wake up and realize how much money should be in their pockets instead of industry’s pockets.”
In North Dakota: Legislators and state officials have argued that disputes should be settled in the courts. They rejected a measure in 2021 that would have prevented companies from taking deductions unless explicitly allowed in a lease, and another bill in 2023 that would have required oil companies to provide mineral owners with more information about how royalties are calculated.
State Sen. Dale Patten, a Republican from Watford City, said the Legislature is ill suited to address concerns related to private contracts and royalty owners should seek relief from the courts. Legal action would be prohibitively expensive for most families, however.
North Dakota Sen. Dale Patten, a Republican from Watford City, served as chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the legislative session that ended in May.
(Kyle Martin for the North Dakota Monitor)
“We’re getting into really complicated issues. And actually in my mind the proper venue to solve that would be in the courts,” said Patten, who has served as chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “And you deal with it on a company-by-company basis.”
Public officials have argued that royalty owners should have negotiated language into their leases to prohibit deductions. But leases in many cases were signed decades ago, before this was an issue, and don’t mention who should pay for postproduction costs. The leases don’t expire unless production stops. And in new lease negotiations, mineral owners are at a disadvantage against companies unless they own a large percentage of the mineral rights in the area.
“It’s really difficult for a private landowner to negotiate a no-deductions lease in North Dakota,” Anderson said.
Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, which represents the oil industry, warned that regulating or limiting the expenses that companies pass on to owners would discourage oil and gas investment in the state and drive business away.
“It’s one of the most foolish things the state of North Dakota could ever do, is to try and essentially financially punish operators from getting a better price for their commodities by not allowing postproduction costs on some of those things,” Ness said in an interview.
But Weber, the attorney who represents mineral owners, said it’s time for the Legislature to get involved and address the concerns.
“Given that the court has already selected what it is going to do,” he said, “the only way to fix it is to get it to the Legislature.”
Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.
Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!
Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.
Very enjoyable indeed, and it seems we’re finally free from the Snyder influence as well as the colour-drained imagery. This is Superman not just in primary colours but as an unabashed boy scout, a good person who often lets a nice, calming remark go with the rescue of an understandably frightened person. I was often reminded of JMS’ memoirs in which he wrote what Clark Kent meant to him as a child - someone who is above all other things kind, who combines his strength with decency, who was a friend. (Given JMS had the abusive childhood from hell, fictional Superman was literally the only person who was.) Also, director James Gunn doesn’t go for the relentless slapstick/gag machinery which had put me off the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie for a while (and off Thor: Ragnarök), which isn’t so say the movie is without humour, absolutely not, but it’s used in a way that leaves the more serious scenes room to breathe. Perhaps the fact helps that we have here in the year 2025 a movie with a hero who is an illegal alien (and gets explicitly attacked for that reason), whose enemy is a demagogic techbro billionaire who uses literal evil monkeys on social media to campaign against him (and that’s the most restrained thing he does, his other plots going all the way to the usual world endangerment as par the supervillain course), and a US government who thinks nothing of teaming up both with the billionaire and with villainous foreign dictators, outsourcing the imprisonment of our immigrant hero to them to get rid of the pesky human rights he’d nominally have on US shore…. Yeah.
(Subtle, this movie is not.)
I loved how absolutely committed to its comics origin the film is, most obviously with Krypto. If you’ve seen the trailer: Krypto’s appearances in the movie are all like this in tone during the movie, and it’s adorable even for a cat person like me. Most of all, I loved that Lois Lane, played by Rachel “Mrs. Maisel” Brosnahan, really gets to be a reporter in every fibre of her being, in a show, not tell manner. The scene in which after Clark made the mistake of saying he’d let her interview him as Superman she relentlessly grills him (not in an unfair way, I hasten to add, but asking exactly all the questions which a good reporter WOULD ask in this particular situation) is as good as advertised, and it’s Lois’ reporter instincts that hugely lead to saving the day. (Along with various other factors and people, making this in addition to everything else a good ensemble movie. Also, since the movie starts with her and Clark already in a relationship and with her knowing he’s Superman, we skip the Lois-Clark-Superman-secret identity trope. (Look, I loved Lois & Clark in the 1990s, but it really would not work anymore today if we’re to believe in Lois the excellent reporter. )
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I've passed my mother part of my sashiko thread cache---just Olympus yellow and leaf-green, a few little skeins each. After her cataract surgery, she can see well enough to handstitch with thick thread, an activity she hasn't felt comfortable doing for 20 years. Great.
My hands are almost at a point where I could try finishing the handsewn Stowe bag that uses sashiko-style stitching as decoration. It was absolutely correct early in 2022 to put the bag on hold indefinitely, and I don't need it except as a calibration tool; I could knit or crochet something more usable without buying anything. (A example of a useful bag pattern that isn't the endless string bags and netted shopping totes: Basket Bag.) I think I'd like to finish the Stowe as an art object sometime, when it'd be less of (sorry) a reach.
My main yarn project is almost stitch-complete. Because its knitted analogy to sewing twill tape into a seam or armhole-edge (applied icord, against stretch) is rather boring, I've begun not one but two projects meanwhile that may never see completion. I'm okay with it: the main project really is almost finished as a result. It's a knit-crochet hybrid that uses yarn left from the round blanket, and if I can photograph them, they'll be best done together. So very many yarn-ends.
The two infrastructural-support projects would be fine to make for real. It's fine if they're unreal, too, as garments that may not fit: Luminos and Cedarvale. Storebought cap-sleeved tees similar to Luminos were once my workaround for summertime office-casual wear or a stab at cocktail attire, depending on the fabric. Somehow, my shoulders have outgrown the cap-sleeved Boden top I wore in 2019.
(My left shoulder has untwisted in the past year from the last bits of childhood scoliosis/kyphosis. Just some full watering cans, occasional forearm-sink pushups, and gentle range-of-motion stretching to help that shoulder settle---even less structured than the standard pushups and forearm planks I did regularly in 2019. I dunno! Peri may be a factor for slightly bulkier deltoid muscles, via declining estrogen.)
When my hands can manage finishing the Stowe bag, they ought also to be able to handstitch the seams of a muslin/toile (modern sense, a test attempt) for a short-sleeved sewn top. They won't be happy with a sewing machine's vibrations for longer, if ever; tiny steps. But that's why the question in the other post came up---sewing a bit no longer seems completely impossible, and if I've outgrown sideways my tidy, non-bulky tops that were already the least bad outcomes from some rather clever shopping, I may need to make something.
If you sew garments from others' patterns at all (even if it's been a while), which patternmakers do you like?
Some good-quality designers I'm aware of are Muna and Broad, Closet Core, Itch to Stitch, Merchant & Mills.
If we disregard niceties such as matching a print at fronts/seams, I'm low intermediate, not beginner; I can look at a line drawing and discard a pattern as not possible for a specific individual's shape. I last went looking for patterns 10-12 years ago! A lot of indie designers have entered the market since then, and the big four---Simplicity, Butterick, Vogue, and McCalls---are kind of dead.
(I'm not in a hurry to sew anything, either. Only asking for ideas.)
Ballots for 2025 OTW Board of Director election are out. Voters have until August 18, 2025, 23:59 UTC to cast their vote. Read more at: https://otw-news.org/33jx4xx7
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Patrick Sheppard, Ronon Dex, Teyla Emmagan Rating: M Length: 11,758 Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply Creator Links:WonkyElk on AO3, cookiemom6067 on AO3, cookiemom6067 on the Audiofic Archive Themes: Marriage of Convenience, First time, Hurt/comfort, Complete AU
Summary: “Damn it, John, you’re thirty-six, and you’ve never had a stable relationship.”
Patrick Sheppard adjusted his tie and gave him that familiar look, that 'I’m trying to love you, son, but you just keep on disappointing me’ expression, which had started somewhere around John’s eleventh or twelfth birthday - just as soon as he got an ounce of healthy rebellion - and had rarely left his dad’s face since.
Reccer's Notes: Ronon plays matchmaker in this marriage of convenience, recommending Rodney to John, who's undertaking the marriage mostly to piss off his father, but also to strengthen his place in the company hierarchy. Rodney seems the perfect spouse to annoy Patrick Sheppard, being brash, and, most importantly, male. But then it turns out they get on remarkably well, and eventually Rodney encourages John to be himself, not continue to try to please his (impossible to please) father. There's angst, character development, romance, and some action/adventure, until they work it out. An excellent read!