Pretty Terrible

Collage by Wangechu Mutu
Short article about Mutu & her art at Hi Fructose.

It’s been a bit of a hectic week for me, so no commentary, but have some links anyhow!

• This Month (And Every Month), Black Sci-Fi Writers Look To The Future Alaya Dawn Johnson being smart.
• Writing Women Characters as Human Beings Kate Elliott being smart.
• “Are they going to say this is fantasy?”
• The Toxicity Of Talent (Or: Did You Roll A Natural 20 At Birth?)
• On That Article from that Former MFA Professor, from a Current MFA Student
• Remembering Leonard Nimoy: A Rabbi’s Eulogy (warning: may cause crying)
• Nimoy and Spock: Reflections and Farewells
• How Leonard Nimoy’s Death Revealed Facebook’s Draconian Community Standards (Again)
• Why The Sound of Music is still genius at 50
• Project BQ: Training the muscle between my ears
• Attention policing paradox
• Crazy Bullshit People Said About Web 2.0 At A Party I Went To In San Francisco In Like 2004 vs. How Twenty-Year-Old Women Use It To Ship Couples On The CW
• A Note on Call-Out Culture I’ll note that I don’t agree with everything in this article, but it did provide me with some food for thought.
• Team Angry Cat
• Building the First Slavery Museum in America

And on a completely different note: I’ve seen my name pop up on some Hugo nominations lists under Fan Writer. If you’re nominating me, thank you so much. If you’re not, why not? (I kid, I kid: there’s been a lot of people doing really good work this year.)

I’ll also mention that nominations close on March 10, so if you’re eligible to nominate, please take the time to nominate the individuals and works you feel are most deserving.

Embroidery by Ana Teresa Barboza

• The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed
• The Snapchat and The Platypus Kids these days with their technology.
• Delightful profile of Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer from Vanity Fair
• Thorns in My Throat: Writing Through the Scars Amazing essay by Shveta Thakrar about finding her voice.
• Revenge Porn Dude Wants His Personal Info Removed From Internet Lolol Last I looked, the comments were full of utterly delightful GIFs.
• What Kind of Man Joins the Men’s Rights Movement? Ones that’ll make your skin crawl!
• No Boys Allowed: School visits as a woman writer Shannon Hale talks about a thing that happens when she does school visits–only the girls are given permission to miss class to come to her talk and yet when there’s a male author, all students get permission. This is a really, really, really important thing that folks need to talk about.
• And that leads into this post from K. Tempest Bradford: Let’s Talk About “Comfort Zones” in which she talks about some of the reaction to her xoJane piece on her challenge to readers. Much of the reaction? Has been double-plus ungood in a way that’s really baffling. Do people really dislike reading challenges that much? If you’re on board with this sort of challenge, you can contact the lovely folks behind Uncanny and get a free issue!
• A world in which race matters I thought this was a really interesting exploration of how race is important in media by N.K. Jemisin.
• Did you know that there was a clickbait-y article about romance this week? There was! Luckily, you don’t have to have to actually read it as Olivia Waite takes it on here: Even More Romance Novels For the Modern Woman, Whoever She May Be
• Stories of the Past and Future I love this so much.
• Why Twitter Is Even More Worthless Than You Think Hey, so I really wanted an excuse for my use of Twitter and I thought their analytics would give me the justification I need, but it turns out they kind of suck so I’m going to wave my power user dick around and whine. There, saved you a click.

Watercolor by Endre Penovác

Right, so the day job is making me pull my hair out right now (SAP implementation gone pear-shaped, lolsob), so here’s some links.

• Black Girls Are Being Pushed Out of School
• Here’s an utterly amazing speech by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves given as he sentenced three white murderers.
• Planning your weekend getaway to Jason Nation (It’s HUGE!)
• “Games deserve better than the games industry.”
• Let’s Call Female Online Harassment What It Really Is: Terrorism
• There’s No Morality in Exercise: I’m a Fat Person Who Made a Successful Fitness App (note: there’s an animated GIF at the top of this piece) I’ve been playing one of the games developed by Naomi Alderman and Six to Start (The Walk) and it just makes me happy to know that this is their attitude towards exercise and that one of the developers is fat. That really means a lot to me. More than I can put into words, really.
• Why the rhetoric surrounding Beyoncé and Beck annoys me “Let’s work to avoid falling into the trap of demonizing collaboration, women, and traditions that don’t fit perfectly into the individual, musical genius narrative that excludes so many cultural and artistic traditions.”
• The Fight for Masculinity in Science Fiction The gift that keeps on giving, yo.
• Black, queer, feminist, erased from history: Meet the most important legal scholar you’ve likely never heard of
• How Etsy Alienated Its Crafters and Lost Its Soul Yep.
• Kameron Hurley on Trigger Warnings and Neil Gaiman For me, this is the heart of Hurley’s argument: “What kind of a world do we live in where other professionals, other creators, fear the social power of another creator to such an extent that they can’t even have professional disagreements? And if other creators won’t say anything, what about the people in our society that these sorts of warnings were designed to protect? Why would any of them say, ‘Hey, that’s not cool?’ and risk the pile-on?”
• Damage This is a powerful and painful piece.  The subject is female genital mutilation.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates remembers David Carr.
• A Century After Being Cast into the River Thames, a Celebrated Typeface Reemerges
• If raiding guilds were actually honest I’m pretty sure I’ve run into this actual guild a few times.

Have a delightfully 80’s video.  With dinosaurs.

Hoodoo Gurus – I Want You Back by soulpatrol

Floral Watercolors by Marta Spendowska

• Kill Your Rituals, Not Your Darlings Harry Connolly stops by Kate Elliott’s blog and talks about the evolution of his writing process.  This really resonated for me because I will come up with a million reasons why I can’t write and 90% of the time they’re bullshit reasons.
• My happiness depends on you: giving voice to the unsung women of pop This is a neat project and looks at these songs from a perspective I hadn’t necessarily considered before.
• Newsflash: the Firefly guys were villains Say it ain’t so!
• Vanishing Act Whoa–Barbara Newhall Follett published her first book when she was 12 (to great acclaim) and then disappeared forever when she was 26 and her husband barely even bothered to look for her? Wow. I’m going to pretend she ran off to a feminist commune and lived the rest of her days in happiness (although I am 99% sure that her husband killed her as that’s the most likely answer here).
• Gender and the Hugo Awards This is a really good analysis by Aaron Pound.  I think an analysis of race and the Hugo Awards would also be illuminating.
• Intersectional is more than a three-letter country Wow, yeah. The way things are here in the US is definitely not the way they are in the rest of the world. And it is helpful to remember that.
• How “Clean” Was Sold to America I feel like this article is interesting but sort of falls apart at the end–I’d have liked more a through line from the advertising of the past up until now with, perhaps, more of an emphasis on how women’s bodies, in particular, are pathologized. I am maybe asking too much from Gizmodo.
• This guy took my spot…so I put the snow back. SEEMS LEGIT.
• Survivors of 1980s AIDS crisis reveal what happened to them …yeah. This is a part of our history which is slowly being forgotten. It shouldn’t be.
• ‘Female Husbands’ In The 19th Century This is an excellent article. One thing I like about it is that it allows for a variety of identity and cautions the reader to not make assumptions.
• When Sex Won’t Work Moving first person account of dealing with vaginismus.
• Ronni Dolorosa on Cults and Abuse Dynamics in Fandom Ronni says a lot of really important things here and emphasized the necessity of remembering our history.
• I’m Brianna Wu, And I’m Risking My Life Standing Up To Gamergate “My capacity to feel fear has worn out, as if it’s a muscle that can do no more.”
• Hands Kari Sperring writes about the erasure of older women–except when their labor is needed.
• I wrote about Wadhwa and you’ll never guess what happened next! Amelia Greenhall has been on fire lately. I’m so glad she’s speaking.

And wow, this is..well, just watch it. I am not a huge fan of the song but this is gorgeous.

Sergei Polunin, “Take Me to Church” by Hozier, Directed by David LaChapelle from David LaChapelle Studio on Vimeo.

Watercolor by Maja Wronska

• Five years on This is a very personal and beautifully written account of stroke, mental health, academia, and the career change that happened when those three things came together.
• And So We Meet, Again: Why The Workday Is So Filled With Meetings I knew it. Meetings are mostly useless.  I have a daily status call these days at the dayjob and yesterday’s was so excruciating that people took to playing tic tac toe and doodling in the online team room (it was pretty great).
• Spinning our own fates: the appeal of lifestyle porn Yep. These hobbies are stupid expensive and unattainable for a lot of people.
• The Bluetooth logo is formed by Nordic runes OKAY THIS IS SUPER COOL, GUYS.
• My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood Tess Gerritsen had a book optioned, the studio was acquired and the new owners decided to use her IP without honoring the contract. This is a pretty big deal.
• The Courage to Say Yes Great essay by Kate Elliott about self-rejection and why it does take courage to say yes.
• Poetweet: Tiny Meanings in Large Coherence This might be one of my new favorite things on the internet.
• Stop Equating Women In Tech With Engineers Oh goodness, yes. Other industries have this problem, too.
• Awful transit policy fails everyone in metro Detroit While it is totally awesome that guy who was walking 20 miles to/from work was able to get a lot of help after his story went viral, that’s one guy. I’d rather see the city and the suburbs get their shit together and make a transit system that works.
• Detroit is Not a ‘Blank Slate’ – These Maps Prove It Of course it isn’t. Never has been.  Also, do not talk to me about turning it back into farmland. Unless you are going to test and remediate the soil for toxins or provide materials and clean fill for raised beds, it’s not as simple as going outside and sticking some seeds in the ground.
• Framing a Young Rocker: The Man Who Picked Glasses for Buddy Holly
• Ireland’s heroine who had sex in her baby’s tomb Because that is TOTALLY the most interesting thing about Maud Gonne. Except, you know, not. Also, Yeats was a CREEPER. Brilliant poet, horrible human being.
• What Happens When a Prominent Male Feminist Is Accused of Rape?
• Quiet, Ladies. @wadhwa is speaking now. Epic takedown of Vivek Wadhwa by Amelia Greenhall. This is a fantastic and important read.
• Power and “Political Correctness” and Political Correctness Is More Reasonable Than Jonathan Chait
• You are totally unreliable Twitter This essay reflects a lot of what I currently think about Twitter. It’s hard to believe in good faith and nuance in that space.  I’m doing a lot of thinking. I still like and enjoy Twitter, but I have concerns.
• A Mosque of One’s Own
• Pono Player review: A tall, refreshing drink of snake oil
• Questions I Have About The Harper Lee Editor Interview The more I read about the new Harper Lee book, the more concerned I am.
• What Really Happened to Baby Johan? This was incredibly hard to read and I don’t have children. If you’re upset by dead babies, be aware that this story is about one.
• Barb Abney, Sleater-Kinney & Being a 40something Woman Who Creates Things
• Mighty Mites brb, setting myself on fire.
• On Sexism and Awards Justine Larbalestier talks about the kinds of YA books that are nominated for and win awards and the ones that don’t.
• The Absence of Women Marie Brennan collects and presents data on the women characters in Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind.
• The Psychopaths of GamerGate Are All That’s Left, and They’re Terrifying
• Insomnia That Kills
• Elizabeth Bear writes about writing diverse characters.
• No More, The NFL’s Domestic Violence Partner, Is A Sham Anything that’s purporting to speak for a cause and has eleventy billion corporate partners is likely a sham. Not sure why this is news. But I’m one of those weird people who wears very little outwardly branded clothing or accessories.