“Japan 2” by Simon Prades

Yesterday was that glorious day many of us know as New Phone Day. And today was that inglorious day known as “swear about all the music that didn’t come over in the iCloud backup” and other phone shenanigans.

I called the help desk at work for assistance with one of my multi-factor authentication logins and got mansplained at and gaslit by the tech. Let’s see: I was told what multi-factor authentication is, that I was using the wrong credentials despite being able to use those very same credentials to access the resource on my work computer (which has a cPass token), that I didn’t need my phone to access those resources on my computer–even though I told him that I may have need to access those resources via my phone, and that there was no such thing as the userid I was given despite me using it earlier that day on my computer. I asked him to start a screen sharing session with me so I could show him the instructions I had and he wouldn’t do it. Guess what the problem was? When my account was originally set up, it wasn’t set up with a phone number. Which was the exact same problem I had with my other work MFA login and which was resolved without any mansplaining at all. And when I pointed out to him that this issue was not user error, he got really, really, really defensive about it.

And that’s the thing: I’m pretty tech savvy. I can make computers go good. I can’t even imagine how horrible this would be to deal with when you really aren’t good with technology, for whatever reason. Years ago, I worked with someone who called the help desk because she couldn’t connect to her home wifi and they told her to call her ISP. Which she did and they proceeded to have her uninstall a bunch of stuff that was actually necessary. Heck, I have a coworker now who can’t connect to the office wifi because she can’t remember that she has to use the secure client and her cPass to do so and she keeps trying to use the default Windows network manager.

Anyhow. Have some links. There’s a few funny ones, a few fierce ones, and some seriously awesome ones.

• This is a fantastic article by my friend Jennie Spotila about creating while dealing with chronic illness: 5 steps to Creative Focus, in sickness and in health.
• Twitter’s new update leaves accessibility users behind This is super uncool.
• 19 Reasons This “Survival” Story Smells Fishy
• Another astounding and heartrending essay from Dimas Ilaw: The Shape of the Darkness As It Overtakes Us
• “Unbury the Future”: Martha Wells’ Full Speech from the 2017 World Fantasy Awards This is going on my Hugo ballot for Best Related Work, it’s that good.
• The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ Into English I never thought I’d be consumed with the burning need to buy a new translation of the Odyssey and yet: here we are.
• Billy Dee Williams, the Only Black Man in the Future
• Why Can’t Black Witches Get Some Respect in Popular Culture?
• Open Letter: An Open Letter to White People in Need of a Token Brown Person
• Great piece about zero sum games and, you know, some theology: ‘They are filled with new wine’
• An Oakland-Based Graffiti Camp That’s Just For Girls This is super-great.
• How Men Elevate, and Women Ruin, the Foods They Love And, as you know Bob, this goes for pretty much everything. Spare me your scorn for the enthusiasms of women.
• The Struggle of “Eating Well” When You’re Poor I’ve been poor. It’s incredibly hard to eat a reasonably healthy diet when you have limited access to grocery store and not much money.
• The dollhouses of death that changed forensic science This. Is. Awesome.
• The Male Sensitivity Reader©

This is my new favorite thing:

Make a Suggestion for the Links Post!