Pretty Terrible

I’ve been fighting with technology all week at work. We’ve ported some applications into our environment and not only are they are still pretty unstable, they’re also replacing some applications which we’re deprecating in, oh, about six weeks. And I need to writing training documentation and figure out data conversions–without access to learn the tools myself. So that’s been fun.

However, my lunchtime reading is Ann Leckie’s newest novel, The Raven Tower, and boy, is it good. I’m about halfway through and at some point I’m pretty sure I’m going to break and inhale the balance of the book one evening. I’m also working my way through The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout. It’s quite a disturbing read and Stout’s matter of fact descriptions of horrible actions doesn’t help. But it’s also interesting and not a particularly long book.

Hugo nominations close tonight and I still haven’t started my ballot. I suppose I’d better get on that, eh?

[Read more…] about “And some days I can’t even trust myself”: Links for 2019-03-15

I feel like an awful lot of us have been struggling with loving art that’s made by people who are terrible human beings. At the very least, I know it’s something that I struggle with.

When I was little–no older than 9 or 10–we’d get the occasional free weekend of HBO and that would always mean there’d be the opportunity to watch Bill Cosby: Himself, which was, for whatever reason, something that I absolutely loved. The idea of watching the show again, now that I know what Cosby was doing to women, makes me sick to my stomach.

And on the other hand, there are three Michael Jackson songs that I listen to on the regular: “Beat It,” “Billie Jean,” and “Thriller” (I’ve been thinking about culling “Billie Jean,” though). And I know what Jackson was doing to young boys and it also makes me sick to my stomach.  There’s clearly part of me that still enjoys fragments of his art–interestingly, the pieces I enjoy the most are the easiest to separate from Jackson as a person, the ones which can be read as fiction. (And would I buy any of his music now? No.)

I don’t know how to reconcile this contradiction within myself; I don’t know if it’s possible. I don’t know if the contradiction has to be reconciled–terrible people can make beautiful art. I’m fully capable of recognizing that both those things can be true at the same time.

People are complicated and we all make the best choices we can.

[Read more…] about “You wear your heart on a ripped unraveled sleeve”: Links for 2019-03-08

I know, I know. It’s been a minute or two since the last one of these.

I’ve been collecting links for several months now and every Thursday I’d think about pulling together a post and…I just wouldn’t. So I did a lot of thinking about why I wasn’t. Initially, it was because I was too tired. This was true through November and December–going back to work was great but exhausting. Then it became clear that my reluctance was about something else. It’s not that I don’t want to share interesting things with people, it’s just that I was putting so much pressure on myself to do it perfectly.

I am a somewhat anxious person and not doing something perfectly is a major trigger on that front; so I sat down and did a lot of thinking. And what I decided is this: instead of spending hours on Thursday pulling it together I would, instead, spread the work out over the course of the week–take a bit of time every day and do a little bit of work.

Let’s see if it works out.

[Read more…] about “Darkness Has a Hunger That’s Insatiable”: Links for 2019-03-01