More commentary than usual, perhaps. - July-August 02019

Hi! Let's start with the conception of fandoms as cities, some of which are thriving meglopolises, some of which clearly used to be, but have since been deserted, and some of which never really were, although you can clearly see the foundations laid, and some that are more like a nomadic camp that you can see, but that never stay in one place very long.

The concept of micromastery, where someone takes focused effort to learn a small skill. It's not "learn to play a whole song" but more like "learn to play three chords well" (which, if you ascribe to various punk aesthetics, is enough for a whole song), but the point is to engage the brain and the body in doing something unfamiliar until you have a sense of competence with it. Have been doing some of that lately, like using a utility knife to carve cardboard and rewriting a story into an early reader form so it could be displayed in a limited space. (And there's the perennial bit of "someone is having trouble with the technology, let's see what it is this time." that is a hallmark of library work.)

A wave of time-traveling lesbians in fiction reflects the ways that history itself is being corrected to include people who were always there but had been written out of the official accounts, but also the ways in which being something other than the default hero in those stories is inextricably a political act.

Publishers continue to believe that libraries are their business rivals, rather than paying customers who also give their authors exposure and generate new readers for them. Blackstone Audio decided to sign a deal with Amazon's Audible that would make their digital products available exlusively there for 90 days, and in retaliation, the Washington Digital Library Consortium is asking everyone else to boycott Blackstone Audio products for six months. Blackstone signing an exclusive deal with Audible is giving yet more power to Amazon to control things, but also, guess who's going to get the brunt of complaints from useres that they can't get their favorite authors on audio? It's not Blackstone...

Furthermore, after MacMillan decided they would sell a single copy of any new digital release of theirs to a library (library system) for the first eight weeks of that release, the Public Library Association and the American Library Association went "WTF?!" MacMillan's new model is an extra twist of the knife for public libraries, who already have to deal with vastly inflated prices for electronic materials that they can't then sell to each other, loan to each other, and that expire automatically after a certain amount of time or checkouts and have to be rebought at those exorbitant prices. Jessamyn West is entirely correct in blaming MacMillan for taking a stance that is wrong-headed, wrong-footed, and wrong on the particulars, as well. And in addition to suggesting that libraries and their consortia tell MacMillan to take a long walk off a short pier until they come to the table with a more reasonable idea in mind, I think it's high time that libraries petitioned the Librarian of Cngress to say that the exemptions and privileges afforded to libraries and others regarding physical materials should be immediately extended to their digital counterparts as well. If someone thinks of it as a book, or a movie, or a TV show, or a peice of software, or any other physical item, then it should be treated like one, and both individuals and libraries should be able to own them, purchase them for reasonable prices, and then do with them what they want once they have bought them. If libraries want to get some short-term additional copies for rent, like they do with physical books, that's entirely a doable thing, but I'm tired of having to spend more and more budget to get less and less electronic product, when there is electronic product available at all, and if publishers want to think of libraries as their enemies, then by all means, let's be hostile right back.

( So much more inside! )

Last out, a short video of someone using their hair as an art form.

Japan's KitKats are going to be paper-packaged, and come with instructions for folding the used wrapper into an origami form. Perfect to go along with your October holiday-themed advent calendar.

A reunification of twins, one who was taken by Chinese authorities and adopted out to the States. And a photo archive that needs returning of a wedding where the pictures were seized and not returned by the photo developers.

And get some sleep, if you can. Your brain does better after a nap or a sleep.

Write Every Day: 26 August 02019

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-in post for 26 August 02019.

( Somewhere between a whine and deep thought, maybe. )

As for actual writing, I finished up the Giving of Grief post today and plunked a couple of words into a WIP that got it to the point where the action should flow a little bit better, but I didn't have the drive to do the writing at the time, so I gave myself permission not to do it at that moment, and it's probably going to turn out better for not having pushed myself in that particular regard.

Four days before we head somewhere else and we get to hear from other people about their experiences and what sort of things come across their lives.

( It's tally time! )