Forest Scent, Pavel Bautin. Russia. 2010 IAPLC Grand Prize Winner
- 8 Reasons Why The Rent Is Too Damn High
- The Murderer and the Manuscript
- Travers (author of Mary Poppins): “I lived with the Indians…”
- Bullet Journal: An analog note-taking system for the digital age This is interesting but it feels a bit, ah, hipster PDA-ish for my taste.
- Writing hacks: what you don’t get for free This struck me as a really interesting perspective on writing and craft.
- West Virginia spill is a perfect demonstration of externalized costs Yyyyyep.
- I’m From West Virginia and I’ve Got Something to Say About the Chemical Spill
- Chris Christie And Pulling The Red Handle
- Death threats for researcher who demonstrated college athletes read below a third-grade level
- Twitter Regret: First Thought, Worst Thought
- When Does Finishing In Third Place NOT Get You An Olympic Spot? Oh, ice skating.
- The 4 Normal Guys Who Just Happen to Be Olympic Curlers
- Man Poses as Woman on Online Dating Site; Barely Lasts Two Hours
- Seeming Female: Gender In Digital Spaces
- Why I Think Author Eligibility Posts Are Selfish, Destructive And Counter-Productive Of course you do, dude. Of course you do.
- Luckily, Jenny decided to take that particular argument apart: Award Eligibility and What Makes A Reader. And Cora Buhlert weighs in as well: More on the 2014 Hugo nomination dust-up.
- “We don’t need no stinking codes of conduct” may have been a better title for this piece instead of this: ALA’s Code of Conduct.
- Dear Westin Chicago River North: You Have Chosen… Poorly This is the most comprehensive account of the Chi-Fi Con cancellation I’ve seen. Lots of updates at the end.
- Oh, Paul Kemp. You scamp: Why I write masculine stories. Rebuttals: This, again and Women and Gentlemen: On Unmasking the Sobering Reality of Hyper-Masculine Characters
- Justin Landon has a great article about whether or not people who are very successful in the SFF community are given a free pass when it comes to saying gross things on Reddit.
- It Is Expensive to Be Poor
- No Longer Human Content warning: forced birth, disregard of DNR wishes and wishes of next of kin.
- How Did Toast Become the Latest Artisanal Food Craze? This, however, is pretty cool and awesome. Also I totally want some artisanal toast.
- Ancillary Justice and the Value of Hype
- Why I Bought A House In Detroit For $500 I kind of have mixed feelings about this. There’s something about the way this is written that rubs me the wrong way.
- How to piss off someone from Michigan Except I’ve never heard of that brand of coffee, must be something came along after I left.
- The Troubling Case of the ‘Cannibal Cop’
- Love, Failure & Scarves
- “Dumbest Thing Ever”: Scribbling in the Margins of Dan Brown’s Inferno (via) I have to admit that this made me laugh for a solid 10 minutes.
- Really neat article about a one issue zine called “Applicant”.
- Chewbacca Actor Peter Mayhew Unloads Stockpile of Star Wars Set Photos
- Goodbye, Shia LaBeouf! A note on art and theft in the age of Tumblr
- Melting glaciers in northern Italy reveal corpses of WW1 soldiers
- SFFworthy: SFF themed images done in the style of Upworthy.
Thank you for including my blog post in Link Spam. Keeping that thing updated during over the initial 48 hrs might have been one of the more surreal experiences I’ve had in a long time, but I’m happy that people have found it so useful. Hopefully I’ll have two follow-ups posted over the weekend – there are some additional issues regarding perceptions of the con’s cancellation that are worth considering, and given the reactions to the news that the con’s anti-harassment policy had a less than enthusiastic reception from the hotel, revisiting why these policies are so necessary seems warranted.
Especially after reading that Publisher’s Weekly post (Jim C. Hines had tweeted it out yesterday or the day before as well. Objection to an organization with the size, scope and reach of ALA having a policy and complaining that it’ll create an “intellectually chilling” atmosphere (which ignores how *harassment* is what actually creates that kind of atmosphere for people already) is frustratingly myopic.
I am getting increasingly bothered by the “this is what it’s like to be a woman on a dating site” story, because I KNOW it is a common story, and I think it’s an important part of a much larger problem that should be shared. But it always seems framed with this “we’re all in the sisterhood together and we all know this stuff and share together” kind of bit. And it’s always mentioned how there’s nothing about the profile or anything else that is a factor, it’s JUST the existence of a female profile on a dating site. And so I feel like I must not really be a woman on a dating site, and since I’m obviously ON a dating site I, I don’t really count as a woman, or there’s something wrong with me, all that. I’m not in the sisterhood.
Sort of like, some women’s experience of sexual objectification is being reduced to a prize or conquest, and some women’s experience of sexual objectification is being dismissed, ignored, deemed worthless because they’re NOT the prize. And when (it feels like) everyone is saying that “being a woman” means getting the former treatment, it ignores people getting the flip side.
Oh, the Dan Brown article. That’s the best laugh I’ve had in months.
How I wish I’d known, years ago when my friends and I would pass books around for reading and commentary, especially commentary, that there’s a term for such marginalia. Dialogic marginalia – how very impressive.
Thank you, Natalie. You made my day.