- Bengal Famine: A Forgotten Genocide, A Ruthless Empire And An Overrated Prime Minister (content warning: images of starving people) I got this link from Suleikha Snyder on Twitter; she went on to make this point:
One thing occurs to me: Western tragedy always inspires solidarity. Third-world tragedy inspires pity. Something more removed, superior.
— Suleikha Snyder (@suleikhasnyder) August 20, 2015
- Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace
- Why the New York Times’s Amazon story is so controversial, explained
- Stephen Colbert on Making The Late Show His Own Just read to the end.
- For Such A Travesty I think this is a pretty good romance-community centered roundup of reactions to That Book with the Nazi Hero. It’s been extremely upsetting to me to see people outside the romance community to use this as an example to laugh at romance without recognizing that this is an endemic problem and, frankly, the end result of excusing all sorts of problematic content because to acknowledge that it’s problematic would be shaming of readers. Hi, I like lots of problematic things. Acknowledging that they aren’t perfect usually doesn’t diminish my enjoyment.
- Visual Backstory: A Checklist for Science Fiction Artists
- Ad Blockers and the Nuisance at the Heart of the Modern Web
- Welcome to the Bee Hotel
- Almost No One Sided with #GamerGate: A Research Paper on the Internet’s Reaction to Last Year’s Mob
- How Black Reporters Report On Black Death
- How The Hugo Awards Saboteurs Actually Disproved Their Own Best Argument “Beale’s own statements about the Hugo mess have been largely incoherent…” HA.
Friday Links: Covid, Anger, Computers. And Decorative Gourds.
Three pieces about Covid, two about computers, and one about motherfucking gourds.
It’s been extremely upsetting to me to see people outside the romance community to use this as an example to laugh at romance without recognizing that this is an endemic problem…
It’s like people forgot how much praise The Boy in the Striped Pajamas received; which isn’t as extreme in its distastefulness, but showcased some of the same problems/trends in how writers use the Holocaust. (I believe criticisms of The Book Thief were also swept under the rug as well.)
Michal, one of the really frustrating things about the upset over this book was that a book that actually won its category was equally as odious. The winner in the erotic romance category features a sado-masochistic “relationship” between a 28 year old Jesuit priest and a troubled 15 year old girl who is also his parishioner.
Colbert article: yes, that ending.
Also: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/07/1383114/-Stephen-Colbert-shocks-South-Carolina-schools-by-funding-every-single-teacher-requesting-grants
@Natalie Luhrs: Yuuuuck! a priest (or any adult) should be helping a 15-yo, not preying on her.
The thing about the ads is interesting to me. I don’t feel like I owe it to any advertisers not to use ad-block software.
But I don’t use it on Ravelry. Precisely because the adverts there are non-intrusive, non-audio, non-gif, non-offensive and relevant to the content. Because they are vetted by the site. So it honestly doesn’t bother me to see them and I even occasionally click on one.
I’d like to see more websites taking that sort of pro-active approach to paid advertising, rather than just signing up to Adsense or whatever. It says that they value their customers and their internet real estate.
One of these days I’m going to write an academic article on the phenomenon of the “good gentile” in Holocaust fiction for kids and teens. Its sheer ubiquity would suggest to me that the tweet you quote is not quite right. The Holocaust has inspired savior fantasies, not solidarity, and that seems pretty close to pity to me.