Eschewed Obfuscation

* Via yhlee, musical stairs on YouTube!

* Also via yhlee, A Regency Romance in 2 Minutes.

* Michael M. Jones puts out an open call for submissions to his new anthology, Scheherazade's Facade: Fantastical Tales of Gender Bending, Cross-Dressing and Transformation.

* Recent Strange Horizons pieces that are excellent: poem "Thirteen Scifaiku for Blackbirds" by Joanne Merriam and story "Minghun: Unlikely Patron Saints, No. 5" by Amy Sisson.

* yhlee (Yoon Ha Lee) has an awesome story up at Beneath Ceaseless Skies called "The Pirate's Daughter," about words and poetry and music and awesomeness.

* Another enrapturing story of music from Beneath Ceaseless Skies: Michael Anthony Ashley's "To Kiss a Granite Choir," Part 1 and Part 2.

* Quite the depressing, and truthful, article about grad school in the humanities.

A bunch via yhlee:

* Clever typographical logos. I especially like the piano and the coffee and the playground and and.

* Kitchen chores, geek-style.

* nestra on what happens too often.


* IBARW 4 will be from July 27 to August 2! While I am away, so I shall have to promote it heartily in-person.

* thedeadparrot's Remyth story for the Asian Women's Carnival #2, titled "Chopsticks."

* I trimmed my current flist reading filter in an attempt to do actual work this summer, versus Internet reading. I also reorganized tags from "racism" to "race" and combined "sexism" and "feminism" under "gender."

* It is raining ridiculously hard right now. There goes my swimsuit-shopping plans tonight. (ETA: WTF, now there's a perfect blue sky.)

* Catch up on reviews first, and then I will start posting selections from the RaceFail archives with commentary. May or may not be under flock, depending on how inflammatory the content and how argumentative I feel.


* Free e-book: The Element of Fire by Martha Wells. Secondhanded high rec'd.

* Three Catherine Asaro short stories/novellas: Walk in Silence is an SF tale about Lieutenant Colonel Jess Fernández and exemplifies a very carefully and obviously diverse cast telling a moral of interracial conflict. For all its ideological faults as Message Fiction (TM), it's a good read. The Spacetime Pool, a Nebula nominee, is a typical cross-world SF romance; Asaro has done better, but it suffices for what it is. The best of the three, in my opinion--Aurora in Four Voices, a prequel novella to her novel Primary Inversion that tells Soz and Jato's love story; the musical motif is gorgeously done, especially Jato's fugue bird.

* Via oyceter, Kali Tal's lengthy critical review of Cybertypes by Lisa Nakamura. Although Nakamura's success happens to be in the area of highest personal interest, I can empathize, having experienced the same frustration as Tal in reading acclaimed African-American studies scholar Cornel West's Democracy Matters.


* For yhlee: musician's dice!

* Top 10 reasons to become a librarian. Many of the cited benefits are inaccurate, as I know from talking to actual librarians; but #1 and #3 are why I'm attracted to the field.

* Via yhlee: the ultimate IB test.

* H.E.R.B.--Had Enough Religious Bullshit--amuses me.

* As does this humorous dialogue between an atheist and an agnostic.

* I heard on the radio that Justice Souter is retiring? Here's an article on one possible Obama pick to replace him. Look, he's Asian! Wouldn't that be nice, to have the country's first Asian ever (I think) on the Supreme Court.

* Pledge to cut the "r-word" (retard) from your life.

* Article on a white girl adopted by a black family.


* NewFoundSpecFic is seeking submissions, deadline July 5th, 2009. It is automatically nifty for the pun, O my beloved Newfoundland. Sadly, living abroad I don't qualify (must be a resident of Canada, not necessarily a citizen).

* O Canada!

* In praise of learning alphabets, not characters. YES.

* A friendly note on Dreamwidth advocacy.

* kate_nepveu makes a detailed post about Dreamwidth that I pretty much second all the way through.


* Ooh, shape notes! Heads-up yhlee?

* A Cool Tools review of Finale Allegro.

* From VSL, a modern instrumental composer releases one ditty (doodle? sketch? yhlee had a good word for this but I can't remember) a day for a week. All seven are available to download for free.

* Via yhlee, neato ultra-small artworks.

* Paper typography!

* ZOMG CUTE GAMES. Orisinal is amazing. Especially check out Winter Bells and Panda Run. SO CUTE.

* Via VSL: click bored. No seriously.

* Also VSL, a bicycle built for two thousand. Music autoplay warning.

* fireriven shares her beautiful Postcards from a Traveling Oracle: To Nine Sisters, from Kyoto.

* Over at ivoryink, my list of memorable quotes has been updated.

* Via yhlee, free soundtrack/writing music: Planescape Torment, complete.

* buymeaclue writes a overjoyed, optimistic open letter from Massachusetts to Iowa and Vermont et. al. Also diatryma: Iowa has legalized same-sex marriage! We'll see if it survives legislative challenges, but I have hope.

* Via yeloson, a ridiculous example of anti-immigrant bias and racism in public school bureaucracy.

* The UNESCO atlas of endangered languages.

* Via meganbmoore, mindmelting cuteness. Not interactive, alas; but it's real!

* Via Dave Wolverton's email list, how to sketch a novel in an hour (a free writing exercise). I'm going to try this tonight, hopefully--the Snowflake Method is a bit too overwhelming when I've only got a tiny inkling of what's going on.

* yhlee and rachelmanija have launched springfluff, "a no-stress, no-deadline fandom gift exchange"!

* Why skilled immigrants are leaving the United States--the same reason why my father, who has a Ph.D. and is a Canadian citizen (so not even from the high-immigrant countries of China and India), waited five years to receive permanent residency.

* Jo Walton (papersky) on real world reading for fantasy writers. An old link, but obviously still relevant.

* The Bush Administration's memos regarding the War on Terror.

* For Asian faces, M. Night Shyamalan goes to Virginia--not the most informed news article ever, but it does give aang_aint_white much-needed press coverage.

* Via yhlee, Cake Wrecks on the problem with phone orders. Laugh-out-loud funny.

* Did you know there's a Discworld MUD? I haven't tried it yet, but it tempts me...

* A facetious guide written by an engineer on how to deconstruct almost anything.

* mrissa declares a new holiday, February 13: One Year Closer to Balance. And there's a homework assignment! Do something to bring balance to your life, then drop her a line about it. Go on, you know you want to! I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet; it may or may not involve living by Transcendentalist principles for the year. We'll see.

* LibriVox is a project aiming to verbalize every public-domain book in the country and release them as free audiobooks.

* From Coyote Wild, a lovely little parody short by Sarah Rees Brennan--"An Old-Fashioned Unicorn's Guide to Courtship."

* Via yhlee, a funny anecdote about Chinese vs. Swedish manners. I've definitely observed this, and been frustrated by the brusque commands.

* The California 4th District Court of Appeals decides that private schools can discriminate against students. Specifically, a Lutheran school expelled two girls for appearing to act like lesbians.

* Obama talks obliquely about his plans for his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. I think his idealistic vision of promoting religious tolerance through this particular venue is doomed to failure, but he's welcome to try. And I'll give him props for including secular humanism groups. Still, I'm disturbed by the implication that the Obama administration may yield to pressure to allow these faith-based organizations--which receive taxpayer funding--to discriminate in employment based on their beliefs. And one of the commenters makes an interesting point: if religious organizations may receive taxpayer money, shouldn't they be contributing taxes as well?

* In happier news, Johanna Sigurdardottir has become Iceland's prime minister and also the first openly gay head of government in modern times. And the bestest part of all--Icelanders don't think it's any big deal!

* A NYT article on what carriers aren't eager to tell you about texting.

* JournalSpace loses everything in a malicious database wipe--this is why mirroring is not a backup solution, folks.

* Terry Pratchett is knighted for services to literature!

* Another NYT article, this one relevant to ableism, which I don't know enough about. Assistance animals now come in all shapes and sizes

* Via Dear Author: LJ has sent out a reassuring message, of course, but at this point I don't know how much to believe them. 12 of 28 employees have been axed. I've backed up everything with LJArchive, and I also hear that LJ-Sec is good.

* To end on a brighter note, via yhlee: 50 modern and creative bookshelf designs.

Yuletide is due in exactly 10 days, and I haven't written a single word yet. Nor have I even finished rereading the book, although I think I have enough of a refresher to write on. Strangely, I am not yet in panic mode, probably because I'm panicking about other nearer things. And last year, I wrote my fic in two sittings three days before the deadline. I didn't even hate it. Still, I don't know if I can pull off the same feat when ficcing an author I idolize. Not to mention that I have secured a beta in the form of kate_nepveu, so I should be answerable to her and finish my story earlier. I do have some vague noodling, but no concrete ideas--any prompt suggestions, for image/theme especially? I am generally incapable of cramming plot into 1000 words and will not have the energy or willpower to set myself up to write more.


* Almost a month late, but better late than never: POC in SF Carnival, IBARW3 Edition. Blogging about racism isn't limited to one week!

* On SH, William Mingin's review of Realms: the First Year of Clarkesworld Magazine edited by Nick Mamatas and Sean Wallace provides links to free stories, Clarkesworld being a free online magazine. With good taste, I might add--I had read two of the stories in the anthology already from internets-linkage. I skimmed the others, but my favorite is definitely the cutting and powerful tale by Michael de Kler (who is unknown to me), "The First Female President." I admit that I have a weak spot for dystopia politics; still.

* two_star, whom I know solely via yhlee for his awesome song "The Maid of Féil," discusses the look-and-say mathematical sequence and fractalizes it. The result is quite pretty.

* Not atheistic, really--God for the Godless: Salman Rushdie's Secular Sermon.

* Let me Google that for you.

* 28 reasons that Twilight the movie is better than Twilight the book, presented as a picture essay; also, the terribly intelligent helen_keeble with adroit analysis of Twilight's appeal that resonates with me for perhaps obvious reasons.

* For those who care, the College Board's new SAT score choice policy and how it may be no help at all.

* Finally, xkcd posters! This is so going on my Xmas wishlist, if only as a self-reminder. The Online Communities poster would be so much fun to put in my room. And about half the products would be good presents for one programmer-geek friend, but unfortunately (and fortunately) I've already bought his present (it was a lot cheaper too).


A final musing: exactly how much do I love Semagic with quick links, quick user-links, and sensible HTML implementation? Much.

* Strange Horizons has a wonderful column on genre boundaries.

* varkat on 10 epic fantasy themes we don't see enough [of].

* A cool cheatsheet on the major publishing imprints.

* SF Signal presents various contributors' favorite F/SF subgenres.

* I'm finally reading xkcd, and the fiction rule of thumb is beautiful.

* A moving article on contemporary human bondage.

* copperwise on politics and Joe Six-Pack.

* rachelmanija asks for manga donations to benefit a Native American reservation. I should probably send those two random volumes of Prince of Tennis that are gathering dust on my bookshelf--I love POT, but it's not something one rereads.

* I weep for Terry Pratchett, and am ashamed of it because I know he wouldn't want my pity.

* Top ten weirdest bible verses. I really need to read the danged thing front-to-back someday. It'd definitely be interesting to analyze from a literature, and atheist, perspective.

* What happens if you're locked out of Gmail? Eek.