Hello!

If you're here for the fanfic, ( here you goCollapse )
Feel free to friend/subscribe/grant access; please do not take it personally if I do not reciprocate.

In addition to fanfiction, I post linkspam, occasional meta, and tv/movie/book commentary. Sometimes I get political, and my politics are mostly of the lefty-but-pragmatic type. I consider myself a feminist, and post frequent links to feminist discussion. Sometimes I post personal stuff, but mostly that's flocked.

You are welcome to comment on my journal, however anonymous commenters will have their IP addresses tracked and their comments screened (this is more to control for spam and abuse than to punish people who do not have LJ or DW accounts). I do moderate my comments, to the best of my ability.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

New icon courtesy of rydra_wong! Seems fitting.

OK, this is cool and hopeful: a new technology for dealing with oil spills.

This is a fab resource for fic- and genre-writers, I believe.

At times they sounded like villains from a Michael Crichton novel. Russian scientists fight to save the earth from climate change by restoring the Pleistocene grasslands in the Siberian Arctic. This includes re-establishing herds of bison, musk oxen, wild horses -- and woolly mammoths. These Russians are bringing back the ice age to protect the future.

You might need to see this toad with a hat.

You might also need to see the art for this awesome mashup.

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Politics is all moving too fast to keep up! Argh. Also, eeps.

A few political links:

People Power.

TaxMarch

Resist repeal of the ACA.

Resist Bot.


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I rarely get into professional stuff here, but I thought I’d share something today. I spent part of this week in training, learning how to comply with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. What’s that, you say? ( let me tell you a story.Collapse )

Anyway, that’s my little lecture about how the administrative state is responsible for saving tens of millions of birds nationwide.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

I don't know about you all, but I have had the hardest time concentrating for the last few months. Funny, that. ;-)

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In case you need some distraction, I cannot recommend strongly enough ursulav's Summer in Orcus, which is a simply lovely portal fantasy in which birds engage in Regency banter and you will never think well of "house-hunters" again. It's on the children/YA boundary, but with rich characterizations and sensible psychological underpinnings. Plus Vernon's brilliantly creative world-building. Run out and get it!

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And now on to the linkspam:

Courtesy of Linda Holmes at PCCH: this essay on hiking the Appalachian Trail as a black woman. Just lovely. A thing I found myself repeatedly explaining to hikers who asked about my books and my experience wasn't that I feared them, but that there was no such thing as freedom from vulnerability for me anywhere in this land. That I might be tolerated in trail towns that didn't expect to see a black hiker, but I'd rarely if ever feel at ease.

I know Reddit can be a sty, but every once in a while you find something like this summary of all of the Trump-Russian issues.



Here’s a guide from Wired about US Customs and digital privacy. And another essay on the same issue.



Holy crap this is awesome.

I believe this is a church-related group working to protect immigrants.

You’ve probably already seen this link: Welcome to the America black people have always lived in.

This migrant workers’ rights group does good work.

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This is some deep subtweeting: how to identify the Hunger Games districts by using federal government statistics.

Noted for later reading: an essay on the political philosophy of Winter Soldier.

This potato-leek soup looks really tasty.

Old-school X-Files folks may find this Tumblr entertaining. I have to admit that I mostly subscribed to it to see if I was ever going to get recced there (I was, eventually :D ), but it's also fun seeing both classics from old friends get name-checked, and work from relative newbies I'd never heard of. If I were much into fic these days, I'd be reading (and re-reading) a lot of this!

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I've been doing a lot of baking recently. Two successes: a batch of Mexican-chocolate-and-cherry brownies, and a batch of ginger oatmeal cookies. One only moderate success: yet another attempt at macarons. These were both flat and undercooked, although they tasted fine. I'm now 0 for 4 at macarons: I may give them up and try my hand at choux pastry instead...

Happily, the rain appears to have stopped for a bit, so I may be able to get some more running in, which will be healthier than baking.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

So a lot of these links are kind of moot now, but I'm too lazy to strip them out...

This is a great resource for following just the major points of the current political situation.

The US is not a full democracy anymore.

Cybersecurity help on DW.

In case you need something you cheer you up: this capybara gets along really well with a pile of husky puppies.


Y'all know about the mad android tweeter that tweets at midnight, right?

I found this article about tribal resistance somewhat encouraging.

And this one.

Gotta love McSweeney's stepping up with the humor.

This guy mapped Trump's power network. interesting.

Rogue NASA t-shirts!

This is a kind of creepy but also interesting article about figuring out where our ethical lines are.

If you want to get involved in the resistance and don't know where to start, here's a great guide.

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I remember I used to talk about things other than politics...

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

I need to focus on gratitude, I suspect. Because otherwise my head will explode with rage and frustration and grief. So I will take a clue from some of y'all.

5 things I am grateful for:

1. The coworkers I shriek about politics with (most over text), because we're all kind of fucked because of what we do. Fascists and oligarchs don't much care about environmental protection, after all…

2. The grilled-cheese sandwich I just ate, made on homemade bread with good cheddar and pepper-jack cheese and too much butter. I had food poisoning on Sunday and yesterday I only ate bananas and ginger ale. So tonight it was lovely to have something comforting and filling that I knew wouldn't hurt me.

3. This post by Courtney Schafer at LadyBusiness with a bunch of recommendations for fantasy novels by women. Includes some of my favorites: the Dhulyn & Parno novels by Violette Malan, which are just classic sword-and-sorcery with a feminist twist; and the Inda sequence by Sherwood Smith, which are big fat epic fantasy that also has a feminist twist. And because there are two recs I concur with, I'm going to check out Amanda Downum too.

4. Diane Duane: I reread Intellivore yesterday, while I was recovering from my bout of food poisoning. And today I'm rereading Dark Mirror. I do love her oh-so-sciencey view of the Federation and surrounding territories. And her ridiculous alien scientists. Duane is definitely comfort-reading, and I need that right now.

5. My ridiculous dog, who is silly and demanding and has a bladder apparently the size of a peanut.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

Rogue One: Well, I rather enjoyed that. For one thing, it surprised me.

( rebellions are built on hopeCollapse )

So, in sum: definitely flawed, but I liked it, and I thought it was technically a better movie than The Force Awakens.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

I remember this kind of weather: buy snow tires, people!

I just saw this today on Twitter, and it looks awesome: a faux history podcast! -- LOVE IT. Something else to get me through 2017 with my sanity intact, I hope.

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Go go Governor Moonbeam! (I.e.: Jerry Brown telling the tangerine demagogue what for.)

A necessary follow-on: Can California really start its own space program?

Boing Boing provides links to a series by Naked Capitalism on the Ponzi scheme that is Uber's business model.

Brilliant set of photos from Standing Rock.

Did you know there's a national network of Abortion funds?

There is necessarily a lot of fear and uncertainty among the federal workforce.

HOLY SHIT: the new administration may start terminating Tribal sovereignty again. I should not be surprised, and yet somehow I keep being surprised.

I was listening to Guards, Guards! by Terry Pratchett for a morale boost, and yet even a silly story about a city taken over by a dragon had a lot of very relevant political commentary; specifically about how difficult it can be to stand up for the right thing, and how easy it is to just go along to get along. Normalizing the horrible is frighteningly easy.

Orion Magazine has been running a great series on remaining infrastructure over the last few years.

The emotional labor of being Mom at Christmas.

Now more than ever, we need to protect public information access.

Sarah Kendzior has some good advice for the battle going forward.

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In other news, I finally read Fran Wilde's Cloudbound this week, and my patience was brilliantly rewarded by the world-building reveal. SO COOL. Y'all should check these books out: they're only getting better.

With luck, I will see Rogue One tomorrow and then I can read all your reviews!

Courtesy of nestra, please know that Open Road Media is having a monster sale over at Amazon: dozens and dozens of Kindle books are free, including otherwise OOP works by Andre Norton, Nancy Springer, Jane Yolen, Robert Silverberg, and dozens of others. ETA: Here's a link. End edit.

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And now I have to roll off to bed: I ate far too many pfeffernusse today. Woops.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

I realized I haven't posted much lately. Hard to be encouraging when Voldemort seems so intent on just burning everything down.

Sigh.

Anyway, I went on vacation last week: had some great meals, saw some friends & family, and saw the Chicago production of Hamilton! Which was awesome. Just, really full of energy and its own slightly-varying interpretations of the characters.

I came down with a bad cold over Thanksgiving, fought it back while on vacation, and today it appears to have revived and has taken up residence in my sinuses. So I left work early to go home and sleep in my cold house (it was 50 degrees!), and the Mucinex does not appear to be working. Argh.

Anyway. Life continues on; my Nemesis continues her bullshit, my boss is pessimistically supportive, and the new hire we made an offer to in frigging August is finally starting on Monday. My coworkers and I have a running group-text in which we mourn the election results and mock Voldemort, but it doesn't really help deal with the despair.

Between the election and the Ghost Ship fire, there's not much to be happy about in the real world right now.

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Fannishly, I did see Moana last week, which was lovely if not earth-shaking.

I'm a few episodes behind on Pitch and Brooklyn 9-9. Really need to binge on Underground soon. Oh, and I watched Stranger Things when I was cocooning after Thanksgiving. That was very fun, although I suspect I would have found it more powerful if they'd showed much less about what was actually going on in the DOE facility.

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So, on to the Reading Wednesday report.

Just Finished: Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks, for book club. An interesting look at John Brown and his family over the 20 years prior to Harper's Ferry. Seemed oddly relevant, where the main question is how civil resistance to oppression slowly turns to violence -- even when the violence is not directly against the oppressor. I'm not sure Banks answered the question, because he gives the narrator (Brown's son Owen) such a tortured emotional history that the violence seems more to derive from that than from his understanding of the national moral stain of slavery. Unless, I guess, that is the point? Anyway, it was interesting, but hella long, and the women were all barely 1-dimensional, much less 2.

Also just finished Spinster by Kate Bolick, which was more specific about her personal history than I was looking for. But still interesting, and it made me want to read more Millay.

Currently reading: Le Guin's Gifts; I needed a palate cleanser with some hope in it.

Up next: probably Cloudbound by Fran Wilde.

ETA:

OK, I have to finish with this, because it will make you happy. Alan Tudyk records his lines for Moana.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

Current reading: Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks, for book club. Just started it, so no thoughts yet. Also listening to The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis on audiobook, although I am beginning to think Willis isn't a good choice for that format; the endless digressions and communication mishaps come across as far more annoying when you can't skim over them on the page...

Just Finished: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, and I also reread Goblin Emperor as comfort-reading after last week. Both very good. I shall have to get the upcoming sequel to Binti.

Up next: Still waiting on The Obelisk Gate from the library, damn it...

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And woops! Just got my pumpkin bread out of the oven in time. And now to bed, and now to bed.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

Some links relevant to the new normal:

Rules for Survival in an Autocracy. Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocrat—and won.

Anil Dash on what to do now.

Ask MetaFilter has a thread on knowing the warnings for when you need to cut your losses and run. (This is where I got the previous link.)

If you live somewhere that you think you might be able to communicate with your representatives (local, state, or federal), your strongest method is phone calls rather than writing, and letters instead of email. Form letters and form email are unlikely to have much effect. Social media is wasted electrons on a politician. This tumblr post has some good advice.

This is a pretty comprehensive discussion of the movement to dump the Electoral College. Lots of links, although the comments are less useful than I would like.

This is a great Twitter thread about the immigrant experience, and how misunderstood they are.

rthstewart has some excellent advice regarding reproductive health care going forward.

Crash Override Network has resources for cybersecurity in a time of mass trolling, death threats, and doxxing.

A crowd-sourced list of local organizations that help marginalized populations.

Jessamyn West (who IMO is a national treasure) has a great list of resources here, with a reminder that the public libraries are for everyone.

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In other news, protect yourselves. Get a VPN. Back up your data securely (I think there will be even more ransom ware attacks going forward). Lock down your accounts, especially if you're commenting about politics on social media. Use a password service and consider something like Signal to encrypt your texting. Consider re-allocating your investments (if you have them) into more conservative postures.

Also, take care of yourselves. Eat vegetables and get as much exercise as you can -- it's vital for mental/emotional health. Try to get enough sleep (I know how hard that is right now).

Want some inspiration? Bitch Magazine has a mixtape curated by Dessa to keep your energy up.

Or maybe Steve Earle on the cusp of the revolution, if your tastes lean that way.

ETA: You might want to subscribe to or bookmark Good Stuff Happened Today as a nice pick-up occasionally.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

Cancelled my climbing gym membership today; I haven't been in months anyway. The money will go to a local crisis center, ACLU, and Planned Parenthood.

Get your IUDs if you need one, now (and if you can tolerate it, I know not everyone can); if and when they start revoking Obamacare, the free birth control is likely to be first on the chopping block.

I have many rants, but I'll spare you.

Take care of yourselves, be kind to one another, and plan for the future.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

I spent the day working as a volunteer at a polling place in a mixed-income neighborhood full of immigrants. It was marvelous. People were kind, and enthusiastic, and one woman brought her dogs, and the kids at the school where we were stationed were adorable. I met people with the most wonderful names, and entire families who showed up in phases over the course of the day.

And after we got everything packed up and sent off to the receiving center where the ballots would be counted, I went to my sister's house, where she told me the news.

I don't even know.

I'm an educated white straight person with an advanced degree, and I'm scared. How much worse is it for so many others?

I am out of evens.

I took 2 benedryl just now, and I suspect I'll spend a lot of time rewatching The Great British Bake-Off in the next few months.

Holy shit. What the fuck is even to become of this country.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

But at least we have these lovely ladies.

And people around the world who give a fuck about us.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

We don't have The Toast anymore, but we do have Alexandra Petri's Compost blog over on WaPo.

I kind of love this t-shirt.

Well, this sucks. If you are a writer, or a reader of fanfiction, or [insert here any number of other non-mainstream interests], and you log into Google at work, you may find that your search terms follow you more publicly than you would like.

Snopes runs down what that meta-study about flossing actually means. Basically, it's too hard to do a controlled study of flossing in an ethical way, which is why we don't have a lot of solid studies indicating the value of flossing. The conclusion is not that flossing has no value.

How Big was secretly a horror movie. Man, I'd forgotten that Elizabeth Perkins actually sleeps with Tom Hanks in that movie. YIKES, creeeeepy.

This is awesome. (Photo.)

If you like some solid reporting on western & environmental issues, High Country News may be your jam. This overview of the legal/historical background to the protests at Standing Rock is a particularly good example. On the front steps of numerous federal courthouses, I have been asked by reporters whether I think there should be a statute of limitations on treaties. That's a fair question, to which I reply, "Sure, as soon as we put a statute of limitations on the U.S. Constitution." [Ed. note: I think this is a great article, but it doesn't even mention the elephant in the corner, which is Congress' plenary authority over the tribes....]

Huh, I've never made a sourdough starter, but I'm tempted to for this election cake.

I may have to spend some time reading this guy on California water policy.

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So I signed up to work the election as a county poll-worker, little knowing what I was getting myself into. It's a 15-hour day (with two one-hour breaks, they say), starting at 6 am. The guide book with all the instructions is at least 100 pages long. I foresee a constant mild level of panic, but on the other hand that is preferable to the level of panic I expect if I were to go to work that day and spend all day refreshing CNN and the MetaFilter election thread.

The only real down side is that I don't get off until 9 pm, and I will probably be too tired to go do shots with my sister out of the "shattered glass ceiling" shot glasses I bought for the event. :-)

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I was going to find some more links, but I just remembered the World Series is on, and I would like to remember seeing the Cubbies win (if they do), so I'm off. Have a lovely evening, all.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

Just Finished: Erm. I put down a couple of books recently (Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson and Too Like the Lightning by Amanda Palmer; neither of them were doing it for me), but I did read, and enjoy, Stranger by Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown. I enjoyed the heck out of the world-building and the food porn, and will certainly be reading the rest of the series. Recommended.

Currently reading: The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman. I'm enjoying it well enough, although baffled that every version of Victorian London must have a Holmes-analog. Still, the concept is cool and the relationship between the main character and her student has not (yet) morphed into yet another romance.

I'm not against romance, but it's nice to read a book that doesn't have one.

Up Next: Not sure. Maybe The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor, which just came in at the library. Or Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day, for book club.

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I have a pie in the oven (pecan-walnut-bourbon), and I'm annoyed that it took me 90 minutes to get to this point. Watching GBBO has given me unrealistic expectations on how quickly I can bake. (I don't practice. Much.)

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In other news, The Atlantic just endorsed a Presidential candidate, for only the third time in its 150+ year history. (The first two were Lindoln and LBJ.)

Donald Trump, on the other hand, has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.

He appears not to read. The single most damning sentence.

Even though it's probable that some percentage of Trump's followers are not hateful racists and misogynistic anti-semites, and merely feel that the current establishment has left them behind economically, those who are willing to vote for Trump seem to miss one vital fact: he cannot and will not help them. He helps only himself, always and forever.

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Got my voting pamphlet today; still waiting on the ballot. Then I'll sit down with Dad and watch my 89-year-old father happily vote for a woman for President. That will be a good day.

Got some sad news about a friend today. It's not fair, and, well. Treasure your loved ones, folks.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

Has anyone noticed an odd lack of campaign signs in people's front yards? Not just me, I think?

In other political news, I ordered a set of shattered glass ceiling shot-glasses. Hopefully, they will arrive in time to be used on Election Night.

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I loved this: GQ gets seriously trolled for its sexism by Outdoor Research. This is priceless.

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It's probably not news by now that the Trump family uses the Trump Foundation as a piggybank.

This comment about how Trump lost a 100-year-old immigrant's vote by being, basically, himself. So great.

Alexandra Petri is a national treasure. That is all. Maybe, just this once, America saw a man yammer on for an hour and a half about a subject he knew nothing about to a woman who had spent her lifetime in that field, and America said, "Oh," quietly, to itself. Maybe.

If you've always wondered why Obama wasn't able to shut down the NSA's spying and drone warfare. The ultimate problem is the pervasive political ignorance on the part of the American people.

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This music video by a bunch of Australian high school kids makes me want to cry. So much hope for the world.

Why are energy billionaires spending millions to develop coal in a pristine Alaskan wilderness?

Nice interview with the author of Hidden Figures about the book and the history behind it. (Soon to be a movie!) Also, gotta love the editorial correction at the bottom... sigh

Oh, the hazards of free-range farming. Warning for animal harm. (I'm thinking, maybe a bunch of big dogs?)

This is an amazing story about wild geologic and oceanic events in Alaska. The earth is a WEIRD place, y'all.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

Interesting post on the geographic distribution in the decline of violent crime in the US. Needs more crunchy statistical analysis, but it does look like the urban-rural divide is relevant.

Because there's no such thing as climate change.

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So glad I have chorus practice on Monday so I won't be tempted to watch the first debate.

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Four solid days of hanging out with coworkers is possibly two days too much.

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In other news, I received a postcard from Malta today. Lovely photos, with a chatty note about the Dunnett connection (Disorderly Knights has a long section in Malta), and an indecipherable set of initials at the bottom. I have no idea who sent it. Help?

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GBBO continues to entertain, possibly even more so because of the news about 3/4 of the cast departing. Sad! But I cannot believe that Paul Hollywood has never experienced the glory that is peanut butter and banana. How is this even possible?

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

Some nights you just really have to make macaroni and cheese from scratch. NOM. (At least I cut the recipe in half, and I added sauteed onions in vermouth.)

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Sonofabitch, I'm going to miss this President.

Nice essay here on Why English is so weird.

The NY Times on climbing monster Alex Honnold. At one level, free-soloing can be seen as the most extreme expression of the same progression: One generation aid-climbs a route, the next climbs it in record time, the next free-climbs it, then it's time for someone to climb it without ropes. But free-soloing is so much more dangerous and frightening, even to highly experienced climbers, that a vast majority want no part of it. [This article appears to have been posted before Dean Potter's death in Yosemite.]

Noted for later:

Biographical essay on Dorothy Sayers.

The Atlantic has an appreciation of Mary Bennett.

I'm impressed by the VeteransforKaepernick hashtag on Twitter. Good stuff.

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Since I won't remember, I'll do my reading Wednesday now.

Just Finished: The Untold Tale by J. M. Frey. Billed as a meta-portal fantasy. What it was was a bog-standard portal fantasy adventure with a seriously dubious romance (dubious in the sense of dub-con) and a ton of awkward social-justice language, built around multiple two-dimensional characters. I could see a concept worth exploring there, but the execution was poor and I cannot recommend it.

Currently reading: I Capture the Castle because I'm in that kind of mood.

Next up: Probably An American Childhood.

I'm cranky the library has not yet come through with either the new Jemisin or the new Elliott. WTH, library! Gimme!

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I'm most of the way through the first season of Wynonna Earp. Cannot say it's awesome: it has not caught me the way the first season of SPN did. But one thing I can say for it is that it has multiple female characters with different personalities, who all have their own roles to play in the plot. The Earp sisters are the most important characters in the show. But I could do without the tired love triangle/competition over Wynonna, and I don't find any of the male characters appealing in the least. They're all assholes, even when they're supposed to be the good guys.

Unless the last few episodes really turn the corner, I won't be watching the next season.

OTOH, Steven Universe is making me so happy.

I may give Stranger Things a try, although really I need to watch the 2nd season of Jane the Virgin.

And courtesy of the "beebs" extension on Chrome, I can watch GBBO as it airs! Plus The Chronicles of Nadiya, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Nadiya goes to Bangladesh to visit her family and cook, and it's pretty awesome.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

It's still Wednesday here, anyway.

Just finished: Harry Connolly's A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark. It was... okay, I guess? Marley Jacobs (seriously) is an elderly woman with unusual talents and a lot of money, both of which she uses to manage the supernatural goings-on in the Seattle area. When her nephew dies in unusual circumstances, she investigates, with the help of another nephew. I wanted to like this more than I did, but it did have some amusing bits and a pretty sympathetic portrayal of a young man with post-war PTSD. There are a lot of female characters, which is good, but after a while they all began to blend together -- there are a lot of characters in this book -- and I lost track of who was the evil developer, who the unlikeable lawyer, who the sadistic vampire hunter. Mildly amusing, not strongly recommended.

Currently reading: The Labyrinth of Drakes by Marie Brennan, another of the Lady Trent series. This one is set in pseudo-Arabia, with lashes of Egypt. I'm only a bit into it, so no reports back yet.

Next up: if it comes in from the library, The Obelisk Gate (woot!); otherwise Annie Dillard's An American Childhood for book club.

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My job is mostly not exciting, but this week I got to go on a site visit to the San Juan Islands and so during the course of one day I got to see three lighthouses, took an open boat ride which was very bouncy and fun (we actually got pulled over by the Coast Guard!), and saw half a dozen orcas coasting past us, and one of them even spy-hopped a bit. So that was pretty great.

And now I'm back home and I have to work tomorrow and it feels a little like coming back from vacation.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

I was on vacation in the mountains last week, in a place that not only didn't have wifi, it pretty much didn't have cell reception! It was great. But as a result I have more than 2 weeks worth of links piled up...

And because it's 10:30 on Friday night and I have had too much whiskey, I'm not going to sort these. Randomly, then:

Well, there's a backhanded compliment: Reading “Belgravia” is rather like visiting a modern re-creation of a Victorian house — every cornice molding is perfect — but it’s a Victorian house with 21st-­century plumbing and Wi-Fi. It’s for anyone who has tried to read a 19th-­century novel and become bored, say, with the demanding philosophizing in “Middlemarch” or the social misery of “Oliver Twist.” Heh. I think I'll pass.

Natural history and the invention of Great Britain.

Turns out women were the poison pill in the Civil Rights Act. Whoops.

Sea level rise and the future of New York City. Yikes.

Nicely geeky: a character map for the Silmarillion.

Inaccurately-titled story about finding people who knew your parents when they hid from the Nazis during WWII. Pretty awesome, really.

Tor has a new series on African writers of SFF.

Hope as poetry or song: a great compilation of links and poems here.

Some good news from Henson: They will be teaming up with Rhianna Pratchett to make a Tiffany Aching movie. I was dubious at first, but it's Henson, after all. (Coincidentally, I made my nephews and niece (and big sister!) listen to the first half of The Wee Free Men on the drive to the mountains.)

The US expects to sweep the gymnastics medals in the Olympics; this story explains why.

Gotta love Samantha Bee on the Russian connection to the election.

Easy delicious healthy one bowl meals.

Research on the neurological value of silence.

Reddit has a place to talk about bodyweight exercises, and a recommended routine.

Well, this article about the inevitable failure of the Hayward Fault is disturbing.

UK LeGuin gave this commencement address at Mills College 30 years ago; it's sadly still relevant.

So I thought the DNC commissioned Rachel Platten's "Fight Song" for the convention; turns out I was out of the loop and the song's been out for a while. Anyway, it's endearingly catchy and inspirational, and I think we'll see a bunch more vids set to it. Here's one done for Fury Road. (The DNC should have given Connie Britton more air time, though. IJS.)

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In other news, I'm almost caught up on Steven Universe but haven't watched any other tv except the DNC all week.

And my dog-sitter broke my washing machine, argh.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

This picture. I just... what. the. hell?

ETA: Her name is Leshia Evans. She has a 5-year-old son. She may or may not still be in jail, I'm seeing conflicting reports on Twitter as of 9 PM PDT.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

Can we ctrl-alt-delete 2016? I would really like a reboot on this year.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

I love this story: a woman just won one of the most badass endurance races around.

The Atlantic has been doing some great work on reproductive justice recently. Here is a thread of women telling their stories about abortions and miscarriages. The takeaway: people are different, their circumstances are different, and women should be able to make these decisions for themselves.

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We should not listen to people who promise to make Mars safe for human habitation, until we have seen them make Oakland safe for human habitation. We should be skeptical of promises to revolutionize transportation from people who can't fix BART, or have never taken BART. And if Google offers to make us immortal, we should check first to make sure we'll have someplace to live. Maciej Ceglowski, aka that guy who founded Pinboard, at the Society for the Advancement of SocioEconomics annual meeting.

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The NYT asked Chimimanda Ngozie Adichie to write a story for the election. Oh, so she did. Wow.

So how many nicknames do we have for The Donald? He, Trump (Charlie Pierce); The Vulgar Talking Yam (also Charlie Pierce, I think?); the Tangerine Demagogue; Cheeto Jesus; Orange Julius Caesar… what else?

OK, this is beyond belief. Seriously?

If you want to keep your eye on the endgame, the 538 forecast tool is up.

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Somewhere in the Scullyfic archives is my epic rant about the movie Cliffhanger (ptuie!). This article here tells the true story behind that movie. Oh, so 1970s.

Just because Free State of Jones is based on a true story doesn't mean it's not another White Savior Narrative.

Speaking of movies, remember the way Steve Rogers first met Sam Wilson? Yeah, it makes no sense at all. Heh.

JKR's identified the location of Ilvermorny School -- "high" atop Mount Greylock in Massachusetts. Which is amusing, because Mt Greylock just ain't that tall. But it is in a lovely part of the state. I am prepared to be entertained by how it will be portrayed in the new movie. (Or, frankly, in the new story: there are no "surrounding mountains" near Plymouth, Massachusetts! Sigh.)

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You've probably already seen this, but Carvell Wallace's essay about the Green Book over on the Toast is also about history and family and home and gentrification and the loss of the past. (And also about how awesome local historians are.)

I'm really sad about the departure of The Toast, even though I only ever commented a few times. I hope the Toasties find each other in other, safe, communities. I will certainly miss Two Monks and Women in Art History!

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

I'm astonished and saddened about the referendum results in the UK, especially since it appears that many people didn't actually know what they were voting for? I can't even. All my sympathies to folks currently living and working in Britain.

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Dave Eggars has a fairly damning report on a Trump rally in Sacramento. Damning for what it says about Trump's appeal, rather than for what Trump himself says. Interesting...

This won't convince anyone, but it's a great essay debunking a lot of the asserted reasons for hating Hillary Clinton. (Protip: it's sexism.) And again: why is Hillary being held to a standard that never appears to be applied to her male counterparts? Am I not supposed to notice that a media frenzy has been aimed at Hillary Clinton for accepting speaking fees of $225,000 while Donald Trump has been paid $1.5 MILLION on numerous occasions with hardly a word said about it? Am I supposed to not notice that we are now in an election season in which Donald Trump, a proud scam artist whose involvement in "Trump University" alone is being defined by the New York Attorney General as "straight-up fraud", is regularly calling Hillary Clinton "Crooked Hillary" and getting away with it?

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This is a bit hyperbolic, but I could see at least some of it happening: The hack that could take down New York City.

This book about beauty looks really fascinating.

This is kind of a great story -- a dude rescues a baby deer.

Noted for later reading: The Guardian on the evolution of personal taste (I think).

Also wild times in Utah.

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In other news, I haven't read all of this yet, but apparently there are new guidelines from Paramount for fannish Trek films? Um. If they're fan films, how can Paramount issue guidelines? (I know, I know, with the threat of lawsuits, naturally.) But really, if they fall within corporate guidelines, they're really not transformative texts anymore, they're approved derivative uses. Or so I would guess.

... and now that I've looked at the summary at Tor.com, holy cow. This is so gross. I really love the one where the fan filmmakers are forbidden to make their own props. And the one where they're required to only distribute via streaming or download -- they can't distribute on dvd/cd. (Sorry, fans in places without broadband, you're not allowed to watch fan films!)

Eh. I'm sure IP attorneys will have more sophisticated takes than I do, but this will chill any critical takes on the Trek franchise. Although I'm not sure how critical any of the fan episodes/films are -- fan films require so much more labor than fanfiction does, I don't know how far afield those folks tend to go.

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In other fannishness, I finished reading League of Dragons last night. And ... I liked it. Didn't LOVE it, but it was entertaining, and resolved a lot of stuff in pretty thoughtful and creative ways. There is, in fact, one particular bit at the end where Temeraire goes to thank someone and is roundly rebuffed for his pains, that I just really appreciated. That said, I didn't love the way the narrative cut away from some of the more dramatic moments, only to tell us about them later. In fact, three of the most dramatic things to happen in the entire series are never shown, which I found... baffling?

Anyway, it was still pretty fun and I think anyone who has been sticking with the series will find the conclusion pretty sound. Stuff mostly gets resolved and you can see an interesting future ahead for most of the characters.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.

Erm. Went out for drinks with friends, so this may be a bit discombobulated.

Currently reading: Yay, League of Dragons! I'm so excited, especially since kate_nepveu gave it such a good review. It was very hard to put it down at the end of lunch today!

Just finished: Bloodline by Claudia Gray, which is a novel about Leia Organa set about 10-15 years before The Force Awakens. Ben is studying with Luke, Han is racing spaceships, and Leia is increasingly disillusioned by gridlock in the Galactic Senate. Because it's so firmly set within the new canon, there aren't a lot of surprises, but the book does a really good job of explaining how we get to the situation that is so poorly described in TFA. It also explains why Leia is willing to go off-piste the way she does. And probably the best bit is the reveal of Leia's parentage, for maximum drama. It's not amazing, but it's solid and informative, and really brings the characters forward from where we saw them last to where they are now, and that's a hard thing to do. Kudos to Claudia Gray for pulling it off.

Oh, and I finished Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner last week, and that book seriously deserves more attention. The Toasties, I suspect, should eat it up with a spoon. It is marvelous. Although I think I like Titus more than Laura does.

Up next: Probably Louise Erdrich's The Round House for book club, unless one of my other library holds comes in. Possibly The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, which I accidentally bought on Kindle last weekend at a wine tasting, when someone recommended it to me and I looked it up on my phone. Whoops! OTOH, it looks like the kind of book I might like.

Crossposted from DW, where there are comments; comment here or there.