As old as creation / Syphilis is now curable

• Romance and Fantasy
• And Yet Do I Read
• “I was into Loki before it was cool” I’m pretty sure I didn’t write this essay…but I could have!
• A Culture of Moderation: or, no more messages from Satan
• On TRUCEConf and More TRUCEConf
• What No One Tells You About Losing Lots of Weight
• Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, poverty thoughts This is an astonishing and eye-opening piece. Some of this I knew but much was new to me.
• This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time
• Remembering the Great War, 2013 I was more excited by a new entry in this long-running series of blog posts than I probably should have been.
• GIFs, memes and liveblogs: The controversial new language of book reviewing
• Recycled Movie Costumes This is awesome.
• Wounds On Our Fronts: Failure and Success More on stories that took a very long time to find a home.
• Green: R.E.M.’s Greatest Album Indeed.
• If You Can’t Say Anything Nice, Come Sit By Me I think Olivia’s couch is getting pretty full this week…
• When The Personal Becomes Professional
• Oh, look, this argument again. Frequent commenter E ! on reviews. One of these days I’ll convince her to write me a guest post on book production…
• A Female Author Talks About Sexism and Self-Promotion and A Second Female Author Talks About Sexism and Self-Promotion
• Poacher-turned-gamekeeper
• An Open Letter to Mike Babchik: I Am Not For Sale
• So what does a gal have to do to get into The Comics Journal anyway?
• Contemplation, at the end of a season
• The Risk in Speaking Up
• Time Editor Howard Chua-Eoan Explains Why No Female Chefs Are ‘Gods of Food’ and Amanda Cohen on Time Magazine and Female Chefs
• How many male novelists does it take to change a lightbulb: SFF edition
• A discussion about Panel Parity

• Systems and privilege redux: U.S. Christian conferences

• Beware Attack Troll: Share Your Most Notable
• The Ethics of Mob Justice
• Why Pinterest Is Seriously Valuable (and What It’s Teaching Men in Power)
• A ‘Reluctant Reader’ Turns YA Author For ‘Tough Teens’
• Suleikha Snyder has been on fire this week: first with Mind the Queue: Privilege, Diversity and Romance and then with Variety is the spice of love: The Sound of One Hand Clapping
• What The Giving Tree Gives Turning one of the creepiest children’s books ever into an outright horror story. Good job, Mallory Ortberg!
• The Making of Lorde I have no idea who Lorde is (because I live in a hole in the ground) but thought this was interesting anyhow.
• Richard Cohen In Context “‘Context’ is not a safe word that makes all your other horse-shit statements disappear.”
• Animal-hoarders are not animal-lovers and Hana Williams: The tragic death of an Ethiopian adoptee, and how it could happen again. (All the content warnings in the world.)
• The Fat Nutritionist on Real food.
• Jenny McCarthy, Anti-Vaccination Movement to Blame for Whooping Cough
• European Maps Showing Origins Of Common Words
• Shocking Pink . . . in the 1830s? FUCHSIIIIIINE!
• Fox Says Diversity Leads To Good Ratings And Better Business
• How I faced my fears and learned to be good at math This is kind of my story, too–except I learned that I could be good at math through having to be good at math for my job.
• Welcome to Dinovember
• Are We Ready for Tentacle Romance Yet?
• Guillermo Del Toro Reveals His Secret Sketches in ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’
• Occupy’s Rolling Jubilee Ends $15 Million Of Debt
• Families dealing with mental illness need support, too.
• These Sea Slugs Penetrate Each Other In The Head During Sex What is this I don’t even.
• Hild: Fantasy or History? See? Historical fiction IS speculative fiction. Darn it. Also, Hild is my weekend reading, too.
• Stefan Raets on Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh–which I’m hoping to review myself in the near future. And Ann Leckie gets in on the fun with a guest post over at Stefan’s called Skiing Downhill, or Agency in C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner.

And since today’s my birthday, everyone gets a cupcake!