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jazzfishScrew capitalism, part one:
The Municipal-Industrial Complex Around the World: "So that's how it works: we shovel them boatloads of money. They stick us with substandard products. We fuss and holler, to no avail." Rick Perlstein is the author of Before the Storm and Nixonland, analyses of the rise of modern conservatism via Goldwater and Nixon respectively, which I very much want to read except for how they will only anger and depress me.
Screw capitalism, part two:
Why Marketers Fear The Female Geek: "Yes, excluding people based on demographic data makes sense to a lot of people in marketing. It's considered a best practice and it actually is a pretty reliable way of increasing profit margins."
And a bonus side of screw the US health care system:
Rosemary 'Steerswoman' Kirstein diagnosed with breast cancer.
On a brighter note, The Steerswoman is now available as an ebook. It is amazing, and there are three more written and waiting to be converted to ebooks, and three more after that waiting to be written. (Fair warning: Kirstein is averaging about ten years between books, though they tend to be written-and-released in groups of two fairly close together.)
The Plight of Mrs. Beattie: "I've left the archives now and returned to my pedestrian life as a grad student, but the story of Mrs. Beattie keeps sticking in my mind even a month later." Fascinating.
Postcolonial Fantasy and Africa-- Against the Word "Tribe": "Tribe is used for people who trace to large precolonial states, people who never formed states, the followers of a particular local leader, extended kin-groups and people who just happen to live in a particular area."
A couple of weeks ago there was a snowstorm in Cairo. Worth clicking to see the Sphinx at Giza. (I've also seen a photo of the pyramids at Cheops but I can't find it at the moment.) Edit: Fake, via ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
merseine.
The True History of Merlin (review): "Having got himself embedded in everyone's consciousness as the maker of Britain, Merlin then managed to slip the leash and started popping up in European chronicles as a kind of international Mr Fixit." I may need this book.
The Paris Review interviews Ursula K. Le Guin: "So I [submitted my first novel], and Knopf wrote a lovely letter back. He said, I can't take this damn thing. I would've done it ten years ago, but I can't afford to now. He said, This is a very strange book, but you're going somewhere! That was all I needed. I didn't need acceptance."
This extremely unhappy tiger kitten is being used for science: "Specifically, at the DC Zoo they throw the kittens in the pond to see if they sink."
On Smarm, the opposite of snark. "What is smarm, exactly? Smarm is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance. Smarm is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. Smarm disapproves."
Citation Needed, on why computers start counting at zero: there is a reason why, and it's not the why you think it is. "Whatever programmers think about themselves and these towering logic-engines we've erected, we're a lot more superstitious than we realize. We tell and retell this collection of unsourced, inaccurate stories about the nature of the world without ever doing the research ourselves, and there’s no other word for that but 'mythology'."
("Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration." --Stan Kelly-Bootle)
The Municipal-Industrial Complex Around the World: "So that's how it works: we shovel them boatloads of money. They stick us with substandard products. We fuss and holler, to no avail." Rick Perlstein is the author of Before the Storm and Nixonland, analyses of the rise of modern conservatism via Goldwater and Nixon respectively, which I very much want to read except for how they will only anger and depress me.
Screw capitalism, part two:
Why Marketers Fear The Female Geek: "Yes, excluding people based on demographic data makes sense to a lot of people in marketing. It's considered a best practice and it actually is a pretty reliable way of increasing profit margins."
And a bonus side of screw the US health care system:
Rosemary 'Steerswoman' Kirstein diagnosed with breast cancer.
I was working on launching a Kickstarter campaign that would allow me to quit my day-job and write full time.Unfortunately, yes, that had to go out the window. For the next year, at least. For two reasons:There is of course nothing to be done about point 2, and she's absolutely right. But, point 1... imagine if this had come up six months from now. Now imagine a) losing a brilliant writer and fantastic human being and b) NEVER FINDING OUT HOW THE STEERSWOMAN SAGA ENDS.
1. My day-job provides my health insurance. And this stuff is going to be crazy expensive.
2. I could not in good conscience ask people to pre-fund a year off to write when I might spend significant portions of that year too ill to do much of any use.
On a brighter note, The Steerswoman is now available as an ebook. It is amazing, and there are three more written and waiting to be converted to ebooks, and three more after that waiting to be written. (Fair warning: Kirstein is averaging about ten years between books, though they tend to be written-and-released in groups of two fairly close together.)
The Plight of Mrs. Beattie: "I've left the archives now and returned to my pedestrian life as a grad student, but the story of Mrs. Beattie keeps sticking in my mind even a month later." Fascinating.
Postcolonial Fantasy and Africa-- Against the Word "Tribe": "Tribe is used for people who trace to large precolonial states, people who never formed states, the followers of a particular local leader, extended kin-groups and people who just happen to live in a particular area."
merseine.The True History of Merlin (review): "Having got himself embedded in everyone's consciousness as the maker of Britain, Merlin then managed to slip the leash and started popping up in European chronicles as a kind of international Mr Fixit." I may need this book.
The Paris Review interviews Ursula K. Le Guin: "So I [submitted my first novel], and Knopf wrote a lovely letter back. He said, I can't take this damn thing. I would've done it ten years ago, but I can't afford to now. He said, This is a very strange book, but you're going somewhere! That was all I needed. I didn't need acceptance."
This extremely unhappy tiger kitten is being used for science: "Specifically, at the DC Zoo they throw the kittens in the pond to see if they sink."
On Smarm, the opposite of snark. "What is smarm, exactly? Smarm is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance. Smarm is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. Smarm disapproves."
Citation Needed, on why computers start counting at zero: there is a reason why, and it's not the why you think it is. "Whatever programmers think about themselves and these towering logic-engines we've erected, we're a lot more superstitious than we realize. We tell and retell this collection of unsourced, inaccurate stories about the nature of the world without ever doing the research ourselves, and there’s no other word for that but 'mythology'."
("Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration." --Stan Kelly-Bootle)
no subject
Date: 2013-12-24 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-25 02:19 am (UTC)Snow in Egypt: hoax
Date: 2013-12-23 05:42 pm (UTC)On the bright side, this probably has the pyramid picture you were looking for.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-23 05:46 pm (UTC)(The pyramid pic I was thinking of was the bottom-most one.)
no subject
Date: 2013-12-24 01:29 am (UTC)A BIGGER blow to my friends who knew him personally, of course, but still.