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.
Bad meetings: I think a previous manager’s terrible circular meetings where he didn’t allow us to set agendas or take notes (he was paranoid) had something to do with the 50% attrition rate, yes.
“I’d rather see the city and the suburbs get their shit together and make a transit system that works.”
To call that unlikely is generous. Getting public transit in Detroit would be like making salt with sunshine extracted from cucumbers.
I’m from the Detroit suburbs. I know precisely how unlikely that is to happen. Doesn’t mean I don’t want it.
Yeats had the Steinach operation (a glorified vasectomy), not monkey glands. But there’s a lovely story of the Dublin press referring to him as “the gland old man.”
Actually, it’s not clear if he had the Steinach or Voronoff procedure–I know when I was researching this in college, it was referred to interchangeably in the literature to which I had access. The literature may be clearer now, but I’m not sure it actually matters–the larger point is that he had an operation which was intended as a ‘rejuvenation’.