July 2011
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NPR » Blind Teens Tap Into Senses At Chemistry... →
Caption: Campers Mary Church and Jimmy Cong use their sense of smell to detect whether a chemical reaction has taken place.
Hoby Wedler, a Ph.D student in chemistry at University of California, Davis, leads the camp. Wedler says in high school, his teacher told him that because he’s blind, chemistry wasn’t something he could pursue. Without sight, how would he know when chemical...
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Call for Submissions: Gears and Levers (steampunk... →
jhameia:
I met the editor at GearCon and she made it a point to tell me that she’s specifically looking for non-Victoriana steampunk.
Which can go either the way of Fail in which we have a ton of writers exoticizing non-white settings for Orientalist entertainment (I don’t care that they don’t mean to; you know it’s gonna happen and if we have to fall back on the intent excuse I will stomp on...
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Let's talk about my girl Martha for a sec
doctorwhosexualreview:
I’m always thinking to myself, why is she hated so? I really CAN’T understand it.
I’ve heard the tired reasons
She replaced Rose
She’s whiny (pines too much) because she’s in love/has the gall to stand up for herself when the Doctor CONSTANTLY compares her to Rose (Now put yourself in her position, WAIT you don’t have to because you probably have been, who’s...
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The Escapist » Expert Says Blaming Videogames for... →
“I know it’s a little controversial to say but there’s a certain type of racism in place with these killings,” [psychology professor Christopher Ferguson] told Forbes. “When shootings happen in an inner city in minority-populated schools, videogames are never brought up. But when these things happen in white majority schools and in the suburbs, people start to freak...
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Am I the only person who thinks that Gul Dukat is...
eclecticspectrum:
Yes.
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Why yes, I'm posting at 5 in the morning
Poor planning and the intricacies of social assistance lead to running out of medication, then being too busy to pick up more, then going to a 22-hour-long city council meeting, then lying in bed for two days straight because of withdrawal, thus being too sick to pick up more, then finally getting sweet, sweet medication and throwing your entire sleep schedule out of whack.
Withdrawal...
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“Delany clearly loves SF, but feels that to love SF is to criticize it using the...”
– John H. Stevens, on Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction.
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SF Signal » [GUEST POST] Galen Dara's Appreciation... →
“Diverse” mangled to mean “an individual who isn’t white and/or male” needs to die in a fire, but otherwise these are lovely profiles of two very cool artists.
I was a little sad to read that
Jo mostly sticks to cover art for these mainstream comics because the internal art involves so many artists (pencillers, inkers, colorists etc) and she doesn’t like...
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Bibliophile Stalker » Philippine Speculative... →
All the news (and links to online fiction) from the last month of Philippine sf.
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The School By Lavie Tidhar →
holyshitmyporncollection:
I don’t know if you’ve read this, but it struck me as something people here might be interested in.
It is indeed. I didn’t blog about it at the time because, to be honest, I thought the idea was good but the story was poorly done. YMMV.
(While we’re on the topic, John Kessel’s “Creating the Innocent Killer” is a must-read...
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Political theatre
I haven’t been online for most of today; I’ve been at City Hall for the Executive Committee meeting, where the Mayor and city councillors are hearing some 344 citizens (that’s the final number, I hear) speak on possible cuts to city services proposed by the consultants from KPMG.
The consultants’ report did not actually address the efficiency of services, nor the revenue...
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ofanotherfashion:
You might not expect to find the fashion history of women of color in a book about the early days of the NASA space program in the 1950s and 1960s written by an architecture professor. But if Of Another Fashion has taught us anything it’s that the fashion history of women of color pervades nearly every part of U.S. history and that - unfortunately - it has often been made...
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Polly want a cookie?
In which a software developer is a totally decent human being
There’s a ton of Twitter clients for my operating system, Ubuntu, but I can never seem to find one that’s just right. Admittedly I’m picky: I want keyboard navigation and shortcuts, filters, username autocomplete, multiple account support, URL shortening…and naturally it should be fast and light! The closest...
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Reblog if you want an extremely sexual message in...
manifestfreedom:
strugglingtobeheard:
Do it cause I haven’t gotten any!
owwwwww!
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Reading in Color » Borders is Having a Sale…BUY... →
The only ‘good’ thing about Borders closing (besides the potential for more indies to thrive) is that they are having a big sale. EVERYTHING MUST GO.
As soon as I arrived home from D.C. I went to Borders that very night. I was pleased (and a little irked-but mostly pleased) that the majority of the YA section was gone, even the few YA books about poc weren’t there. But then...
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World SF Blog » "The Emergence of Latin American... →
From Wesleyan University Press (that’s right, not Tor, not Del Rey, but an academic publisher so you know it’s fancy):
Early science fiction has often been associated almost exclusively with Northern industrialized nations. In this groundbreaking exploration of the science fiction written in Latin America prior to 1920, Rachel Haywood Ferreira argues that science fiction has always...
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“It’s impossible to imagine Rick Warren or any other evangelical pastor tweeting,...”
– Every time I feel like writing off all Christians as mean-spirited, ignorant, dangerous hypocrites, there goes that son-of-a-bitch Fred Clark, fucking it all up with his friggin’ insight and compassion. Screw you, Fred, and the donkey you rode in on.
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codalion:
codalion: alierakieron: anachronistique: Tor.com » Bartitsu: More Fashionable… wildunicornherd:
alierakieron:
anachronistique:
Tor.com » Bartitsu: More Fashionable than Fisticuffs
wildunicornherd:
Ay-leen the Peacemaker reports back from a seminar on bartitsu, an obscure Victorian English form of martial arts that combined various fighting styles from boxing to...
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Why The Argument That People Using “Real Names”... →
I got two words for you: Will Shetterly.
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codalion: alierakieron: anachronistique: Tor.com »... →
alierakieron:
anachronistique:
Tor.com » Bartitsu: More Fashionable than Fisticuffs
wildunicornherd:
Ay-leen the Peacemaker reports back from a seminar on bartitsu, an obscure Victorian English form of martial arts that combined various fighting styles from boxing to jujitsu,…
“#wishful thinking can make anything faintly historical grounds for a steampunk trend”
...
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An audio clip of the aforelinked scene from Kill...
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DC can't find female creators: sign this to help... →
idlovetobebardafree:
As of May 25th, 2011 16 women worked for DC’s creative staff . This comming September, that number will be cut back to 2 women.
This week San Deigo ComicCon Dan Didio was asked why more women didn’t work for DC and his answer was “Who should we have hired?”
We, the undersigned, are willing to offer Dan Didio and the rest of DC’s publishers and editors a list of female...
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I'm the same as I was when I was six years-old.:... →
creativeradicallove:
If you don’t know my dear friend and heart-sister Sumayyah’s writing, you need to. You can check out her site and read her poetry and fiction.
Reading Sumayyah’s fantastical tales is what turned me on to sci-fi, and it was thru her that I was also introduced to…
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“The vast majority of people living outside prison walls in rural Kentucky and...”
– Prison Culture » Blog Archive » Guest Post: Solidarity through Prison Radio (Thousand Kites) – A Report-Back from the Allied Media Conference (via radicallyhottoff)
From the article: ” It has also helped raise awareness in the majority-white region about the lives of the people who are...
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Tor.com » Bartitsu: More Fashionable than... →
Ay-leen the Peacemaker reports back from a seminar on bartitsu, an obscure Victorian English form of martial arts that combined various fighting styles from boxing to jujitsu, and which is coming back into nerd vogue thanks to Sherlock and steampunk:
Prof. Donnelly started off by explaining how bartitsu was based on learning how to fight with whatever one had on-hand. During the Victorian era,...
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madamethursday replied to your post: Maybe it’s time to take a Tumblr holiday
I’d be sad not to see anymore posts, but I’d rather you take care of yourself before anything else, because yeah. It can get overwhelming to say the least.
Easy there, when I say “holiday” I do just mean “holiday”. I mean, like, a week. Maybe two.
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Like somewhere along the line you've got to be...
I’m not any of those.
(I used to be an artist but not any more.)
You’ve got to accept that it is OKAY to not be an activist, that there are SOME PEOPLE who feel that for THEM, PERSONALLY, just blogging and shit does not constitute activism, that it is totally possible to be “enlightened” or have the right politics or whatever and not automatically be an activist, that...
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Maybe it's time to take a Tumblr holiday
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Comic-Con 2011: Avatar: The Legend of Korra... →
korrathelegend:
This article is super informative and CONTAINS GENERAL SERIES SPOILERS.
An intriguing bit:
The Track Team described the music as 1920s New Orleans jazz but if it were invented in China. I don’t know what the hell that would sound like, but it sounds incredible.
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“The homophobes do not stop hating us when we go mainstream. Even if every single...”
– Pat Califia, introduction to Doing it for Daddy, from 1994 and still so true. (via ecrivaine)
Was trying to explain this to a trans woman friend who was trying to tell me that all us queer folks need to “clean up our image” in order for people to like us. Sadly, I’ve no idea if I got through or...
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Bibliophile Stalker » Book Review: Redemption in... →
While there is much to be praised when it comes to the cultural value and authenticity of the book, what really excites me is how this is compelling and exciting writing. In the first few pages, Lord immediately catches your attention, and she does this through judicial use of flash forwards (an underused technique) and flashbacks (it’s also worth mentioning at how in the latter part of the...
