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silveradeptStarting, as befits the time, holiday-related cheer, epic holiday music, a mash-up of ballet and burlesque, cats that are ready for holiday cheer, cookie recipes, and marshmallow cats.
Then a reminder that the festivities and their accompanying social obligations are not a universal good for everyone.
A lack of motivation may be due to inefficient brain connections causing more energy and work to be expended in the decision-making process.
The skills acquired in one's hobbies and fannish interests are potentially worth putting on one's resume and being used to acquire jobs.
Fanfiction is a great gift to give during the holidays, and plenty of other times, too. If your traditional role is the filling of stomachs, there are plenty of delicious projects to create.
Having read a lot of books in a year, a librarian learns a lot about the art of reading books. #1 is essential.
Surviving the dark means finding beauty in it - having a big social group to do things with doesn't hurt, either. It may involve discarding or modifying tradition to the point that it seems unrecognizable. or it might be taking refuge with the other people who aren't celebrating. It could even involve poking some gentle fun at half-hearted attempts to celebrate or finding a prediction from the past that looks laughable today. As it turns out, there may be a genetic component to how strongly you feel your emotions.
Methods of disposing of holiday trees other than the landfill.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar focuses on the similarities of the Christians and the Muslims with regard to their December celebration. The United States House of Representatives decided to focus on similarities, too, in passing visa discrimination that would bar people from getting approval if one of their parents is classified as from a forbidden area, even if that parent has never lived in that place and neither has the child.
Something very unhappy indeed - a grand jury did not indict the officer that shot a child playing with a toy gun in a park, because they believed the police saw a threat and reacted appropriately to it. Black Lives Still Matter, and protesters filled the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport.
Black women need a more diverse representation in video games.
After being refused the care she needed, and refusing to leave until she received it, a woman died in the custody of the police called to remove her from the hospital. The number of failures compounds exponentially.
Learn from the ways structure benefits those more privileged than you, so that you can avoid replicating their mistakes in your own space.
Pastafarians in New Zealand area now able to perform wedding ceremonies. Rejoice.
A blog that replaces guns in the hands of Republicans with dildoes. Makes sense to me why someone might want to put the sex-negative death dealers in a different light.
Because they could not talk about the film before it released, cast members of The Force Awakens had to resort to other things to get through their interviews. Carrie Fisher and her dog, Gary, acquit themselves very funnily in this Good Morning America interview. Which is good, because otherwise she would have to cut somebody for their insistence that weight loss was necessary for her to go back to Star Wars. Actually, several people might have to be sliced to ribbons for those body comments.
Carrie Fisher also gives interviews as good as she takes them.
Having been in a movie that was all about black bodies, and lots of conversations about beautiful black bodies, Lupita Nyong'o chose a role where it would only be her voice on display.
A style guide to various forms of grammar and capitalization with regard to the Star Wars franchise.
If you are so inspired, there are lots of academies to learn lightsaber as a martial art.
J. J. Abrams says The Force Awakens looks like A New Hope in the skeleton, but all the rest of the body is different.
George Lucas owes a lot of the success of his films to his first wife, but most of the official Lucas* data on her has been scrubbed after the divorce.
To understand and write in any genre, a grounding in the works considered classics is useful. I'm not going to say necessary, as the article-writer does, because I think there is something to be said about writing the book first, and then letting the agents wrangle what genre, if any, to sell it under.
Because emoji originated in Japan, the pictures follow Japanese grammar - which makes it more difficult for English writers trying to tell stories in pictures.
Many women suffer from issues of their pelvic floors moving, displacing their organs and causing pain and other issues. Also, the many ways that women avoided pregnancy and childbirth that don't involve hormonal birth control.
The care that Japan takes for all aspects of life includes significant thought about toilets and restrooms.
Gender politics in Panem - balanced representation and trope distribution, and quite a bit of characters behaving in the binary-opposite stereotype. Which is a lot better than the way television writes white women and casts minority women in those roles.
When observed from the outside, the United States has several obvious and glaring shortcomings in how it treats women compared to other nations.
The election of the Liberals to Canada's Parliament has a lot of people hopeful about the damage that Trudeau can undo.
Lots of countries other than the United States got goodies into their public domains this January. The U.S.? Bupkis.
For adults, a parody of Les Miserables. For children, a lesson on how you can tell someone's emotions by looking at their faces and bodies. This is the Sesame Workshop at work. They would probably also have a field day with words whose contexts determine one of their potentially conflicting meanings. And they might enjoy menu ordering by Venn diagram, which, I admit, looks really good.
How much do we give of ourselves out into the universe for others to appreciate? What do we keep tucked in close, and does it prevent us from doing what we love? How many of the things on this list are things we worry about daily?
Facebook fails to grasp that the name someone chooses for themselves is their real name, refuses to rescind their policy, despite meeting somewhere that has many reasons and examples to show them that they are wrong.
The high stress environment of poverty and neighbourhoods with high visible poverty make their residents heavier, because the stress triggers the survival instinct to hoard energy.
The downfall of the website known as the Silk Road, in a very longform piece from Wired.
The Kitty Convict Project asks indoor cat owners to put orange on their cats, so that if they get out, others will recognize the cats as lost rather than feral.
Popularity is the wrong metric to measure books by, as is great amounts of sales.
What we think of as clutter now may be priceless family and cultural artifacts to those who succeed us, which may mean that decluttering might not be the way to go. Decluttering does make you feel better about yourself, though.
The unexpected success of the KitKat chocolate bar in Japan, with chefs producing bars with different flavoring as a high-end chocolate. Also, chocolate slices. Which is nearly the opposite of food plating decisions that are, at best, strange.
Art from people-made beach debris, of which there appears to be a rather inexhaustible supply. Art of the waves that batter a lighthouse in Wales, which are pictures of the majesty of nature. As are the angry waves of Lake Erie.
An MIT hydrogel looks like it could be used to encase sensors, which could make for smart bandages. Harvard has a collection of historical pigments for art conservation. Ibuprofen patches for direct application of pain relief without some of the side effects of pills. London has a dedicated team of gaslamp lighting, extinguishing, and repair for the few remaining streetlights lit by gas.
The men who try to mansplain Lolita to a woman know not the way that they are totally missing the point of both the novel and their explanations. After all, books about women don't win awards, so taking that contempt into the world around them suits those men just fine, stupid as it is. There's plenty of bullshit to go around, anyway and lots of people looking for any reason to take someone out of context. Or to give reductionist advice about the presentation of women's speech (and packaging it as an app) while ignoring that it's women that are the problem for misogynists, not their speech. (To which no less a luminary than Albert Einstein offers advice on the matter, too one Mme. Curie: "Don't read it if you don't want to." We think he might also have said to not feed the trolls, too.)
Working at a job considered beneath most people helps get rid of the idea that there are jobs beneath most people.
A list of excellent graphic novels, all written and many drawn by women. Also, why you should read romance novels, and why doors are always important in stories involving children.
Jessica Jones suffers from the injury violating morals and social contracts inflicts on victims in addition to their physical trauma. Despite that, Jones never quite gets to go all the way into the kind of character she would be if her backstory was played out realistically. And the show itself engages in some problematic treatment of fat women.
To see someone have a take on the trauma of Steve Rogers, The creator of American Captain may have just the thing for you.
The cartomantic origins of the Tarot are a bit murky, but they definitely turned what are otherwise playing cards into something very different.
Lipstick - the history of, up until recently, poisoning yourself with lead to look prettier.
Human beds with pet beds built into their bases, the very rare sea sapphire, icons of television without their suits fully on, cat fish, cows at play, an egg candle that reveals a dinosaur as it burns, adorable pictures of dogs, a video of common holiday items that are not good for pets, a different video of a seahorse giving birth, the possibility of pet jellyfish, facts about hagfish, folding wetted paper to make animals with curved lines, a tiger-goat friendship, green turtles, a Maine coon and their small human, an unexpected sea otter gives birth, comedic wildlife photographs, smiling, happy cats, a herd of elephants that will walk through a hotel to get to the mango tree they have been eating the fruit of for generations, creatures named after Star Wars characters, and cats at kami shrines.
Random facts from books read, a mushroom trip can shift your personality, and advice on how to read aloud to an intimate partner.
Last for tonight, as befits the post, little lies are practice for big, necessary ones, a thing that only DEATH could know, which is contrasted with truths that are difficult to keep in mind. And Christmas has more than its fair share of those who punish the naughty as well as reward the nice, cats that devour the lazy who don't have anything new, as well as plenty of stories of ghosts and spirits.
Then a reminder that the festivities and their accompanying social obligations are not a universal good for everyone.
A lack of motivation may be due to inefficient brain connections causing more energy and work to be expended in the decision-making process.
The skills acquired in one's hobbies and fannish interests are potentially worth putting on one's resume and being used to acquire jobs.
Fanfiction is a great gift to give during the holidays, and plenty of other times, too. If your traditional role is the filling of stomachs, there are plenty of delicious projects to create.
Having read a lot of books in a year, a librarian learns a lot about the art of reading books. #1 is essential.
Surviving the dark means finding beauty in it - having a big social group to do things with doesn't hurt, either. It may involve discarding or modifying tradition to the point that it seems unrecognizable. or it might be taking refuge with the other people who aren't celebrating. It could even involve poking some gentle fun at half-hearted attempts to celebrate or finding a prediction from the past that looks laughable today. As it turns out, there may be a genetic component to how strongly you feel your emotions.
Methods of disposing of holiday trees other than the landfill.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar focuses on the similarities of the Christians and the Muslims with regard to their December celebration. The United States House of Representatives decided to focus on similarities, too, in passing visa discrimination that would bar people from getting approval if one of their parents is classified as from a forbidden area, even if that parent has never lived in that place and neither has the child.
Something very unhappy indeed - a grand jury did not indict the officer that shot a child playing with a toy gun in a park, because they believed the police saw a threat and reacted appropriately to it. Black Lives Still Matter, and protesters filled the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport.
Black women need a more diverse representation in video games.
After being refused the care she needed, and refusing to leave until she received it, a woman died in the custody of the police called to remove her from the hospital. The number of failures compounds exponentially.
Learn from the ways structure benefits those more privileged than you, so that you can avoid replicating their mistakes in your own space.
Pastafarians in New Zealand area now able to perform wedding ceremonies. Rejoice.
A blog that replaces guns in the hands of Republicans with dildoes. Makes sense to me why someone might want to put the sex-negative death dealers in a different light.
Because they could not talk about the film before it released, cast members of The Force Awakens had to resort to other things to get through their interviews. Carrie Fisher and her dog, Gary, acquit themselves very funnily in this Good Morning America interview. Which is good, because otherwise she would have to cut somebody for their insistence that weight loss was necessary for her to go back to Star Wars. Actually, several people might have to be sliced to ribbons for those body comments.
Carrie Fisher also gives interviews as good as she takes them.
Having been in a movie that was all about black bodies, and lots of conversations about beautiful black bodies, Lupita Nyong'o chose a role where it would only be her voice on display.
A style guide to various forms of grammar and capitalization with regard to the Star Wars franchise.
If you are so inspired, there are lots of academies to learn lightsaber as a martial art.
J. J. Abrams says The Force Awakens looks like A New Hope in the skeleton, but all the rest of the body is different.
George Lucas owes a lot of the success of his films to his first wife, but most of the official Lucas* data on her has been scrubbed after the divorce.
To understand and write in any genre, a grounding in the works considered classics is useful. I'm not going to say necessary, as the article-writer does, because I think there is something to be said about writing the book first, and then letting the agents wrangle what genre, if any, to sell it under.
Because emoji originated in Japan, the pictures follow Japanese grammar - which makes it more difficult for English writers trying to tell stories in pictures.
Many women suffer from issues of their pelvic floors moving, displacing their organs and causing pain and other issues. Also, the many ways that women avoided pregnancy and childbirth that don't involve hormonal birth control.
The care that Japan takes for all aspects of life includes significant thought about toilets and restrooms.
Gender politics in Panem - balanced representation and trope distribution, and quite a bit of characters behaving in the binary-opposite stereotype. Which is a lot better than the way television writes white women and casts minority women in those roles.
When observed from the outside, the United States has several obvious and glaring shortcomings in how it treats women compared to other nations.
The election of the Liberals to Canada's Parliament has a lot of people hopeful about the damage that Trudeau can undo.
Lots of countries other than the United States got goodies into their public domains this January. The U.S.? Bupkis.
For adults, a parody of Les Miserables. For children, a lesson on how you can tell someone's emotions by looking at their faces and bodies. This is the Sesame Workshop at work. They would probably also have a field day with words whose contexts determine one of their potentially conflicting meanings. And they might enjoy menu ordering by Venn diagram, which, I admit, looks really good.
How much do we give of ourselves out into the universe for others to appreciate? What do we keep tucked in close, and does it prevent us from doing what we love? How many of the things on this list are things we worry about daily?
Facebook fails to grasp that the name someone chooses for themselves is their real name, refuses to rescind their policy, despite meeting somewhere that has many reasons and examples to show them that they are wrong.
The high stress environment of poverty and neighbourhoods with high visible poverty make their residents heavier, because the stress triggers the survival instinct to hoard energy.
The downfall of the website known as the Silk Road, in a very longform piece from Wired.
The Kitty Convict Project asks indoor cat owners to put orange on their cats, so that if they get out, others will recognize the cats as lost rather than feral.
Popularity is the wrong metric to measure books by, as is great amounts of sales.
What we think of as clutter now may be priceless family and cultural artifacts to those who succeed us, which may mean that decluttering might not be the way to go. Decluttering does make you feel better about yourself, though.
The unexpected success of the KitKat chocolate bar in Japan, with chefs producing bars with different flavoring as a high-end chocolate. Also, chocolate slices. Which is nearly the opposite of food plating decisions that are, at best, strange.
Art from people-made beach debris, of which there appears to be a rather inexhaustible supply. Art of the waves that batter a lighthouse in Wales, which are pictures of the majesty of nature. As are the angry waves of Lake Erie.
An MIT hydrogel looks like it could be used to encase sensors, which could make for smart bandages. Harvard has a collection of historical pigments for art conservation. Ibuprofen patches for direct application of pain relief without some of the side effects of pills. London has a dedicated team of gaslamp lighting, extinguishing, and repair for the few remaining streetlights lit by gas.
The men who try to mansplain Lolita to a woman know not the way that they are totally missing the point of both the novel and their explanations. After all, books about women don't win awards, so taking that contempt into the world around them suits those men just fine, stupid as it is. There's plenty of bullshit to go around, anyway and lots of people looking for any reason to take someone out of context. Or to give reductionist advice about the presentation of women's speech (and packaging it as an app) while ignoring that it's women that are the problem for misogynists, not their speech. (To which no less a luminary than Albert Einstein offers advice on the matter, too one Mme. Curie: "Don't read it if you don't want to." We think he might also have said to not feed the trolls, too.)
Working at a job considered beneath most people helps get rid of the idea that there are jobs beneath most people.
A list of excellent graphic novels, all written and many drawn by women. Also, why you should read romance novels, and why doors are always important in stories involving children.
Jessica Jones suffers from the injury violating morals and social contracts inflicts on victims in addition to their physical trauma. Despite that, Jones never quite gets to go all the way into the kind of character she would be if her backstory was played out realistically. And the show itself engages in some problematic treatment of fat women.
To see someone have a take on the trauma of Steve Rogers, The creator of American Captain may have just the thing for you.
The cartomantic origins of the Tarot are a bit murky, but they definitely turned what are otherwise playing cards into something very different.
Lipstick - the history of, up until recently, poisoning yourself with lead to look prettier.
Human beds with pet beds built into their bases, the very rare sea sapphire, icons of television without their suits fully on, cat fish, cows at play, an egg candle that reveals a dinosaur as it burns, adorable pictures of dogs, a video of common holiday items that are not good for pets, a different video of a seahorse giving birth, the possibility of pet jellyfish, facts about hagfish, folding wetted paper to make animals with curved lines, a tiger-goat friendship, green turtles, a Maine coon and their small human, an unexpected sea otter gives birth, comedic wildlife photographs, smiling, happy cats, a herd of elephants that will walk through a hotel to get to the mango tree they have been eating the fruit of for generations, creatures named after Star Wars characters, and cats at kami shrines.
Random facts from books read, a mushroom trip can shift your personality, and advice on how to read aloud to an intimate partner.
Last for tonight, as befits the post, little lies are practice for big, necessary ones, a thing that only DEATH could know, which is contrasted with truths that are difficult to keep in mind. And Christmas has more than its fair share of those who punish the naughty as well as reward the nice, cats that devour the lazy who don't have anything new, as well as plenty of stories of ghosts and spirits.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-11 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-11 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-11 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-11 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-11 08:53 pm (UTC)The one with lighthouses and waves is epic sauce.
I have some thoughts about the portal fantasy one; I have a long-back-burnered plot bunny around someone who goes to a magic land essentially as a summoned scapegoat and then has to deal with going home as a) somebody nobody will ever believe and b) a criminal, who must now realign their morals with the rest of society.
Now, about some elephants and lies and other links.... xD
no subject
Date: 2016-01-11 10:30 pm (UTC)That plotbunny sounds interesting. Seems like it would fit in Narnia, certainly.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-11 11:53 pm (UTC)Thanks! It's half transformation fic and half ... well, that. Narnia would be a decent universe to borrow, particularly from the deconstruct-y end of it, as the viewpoint character crosses the moral event horizon and then has to fight their way back after getting Kicked Out Of Paradise. (With body dysphoria to match. Uh, I may have spent a lot of time thinking through this one.)
I keep trying to figure out how to do it in comic format, mostly because I like drawing the main species on the fantasy end of the story, but it'd involve an uncomfortable amount of people-drawing, too. (And be who knows how long. And be another giant project when I haven't finished my current one(s) yet.)
no subject
Date: 2016-01-12 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-12 08:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-12 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-12 10:37 pm (UTC)I would describe Solaris as a work in which the major characters are a possibly sentient ocean and an entire scientific discipline. There are also a couple of astronauts, but they are mostly there to have things happen to them.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jun/15/first-direct-translation-solaris
It was one of the first SF books I read with a really alien alien. I used to complain that most SF books were about entire galaxies of beings all acting like 1950s white middle-class Americans. (Asimov, I'm looking at you.)
no subject
Date: 2016-01-13 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-13 11:39 am (UTC)I've actually been to the KitKat store inside Daimaru - Japanese department stores are frequently more of huge collection of smaller high-end shops, compared to what we think of as department stores in NA. It's definitely very fancy, and the flavors are all over the place. I know several people who are fond of the cheesecake KitKat (one of the mass-produced flavors there), which can be toasted slightly before eating, though I haven't tried it that way (yet!)
no subject
Date: 2016-01-13 02:35 pm (UTC)