Category: Elsewhere

You should read this for 1/20/2019:

Art and Film

Books, Writing, and Language

Extraordinary photos of Jane Austen’s family are discovered in old photo album bought on eBay – and their lives were just as dramatic as some of novelist’s most famous characters

Food and Drink

Via WGBH Boston: Julia Child’s Quiche Loraine

What America Hears When The Press Makes Fun Of The Way Trump Eats Maybe the press should focus more on the fact that Federal workers aren’t being paid. Instead we get this:

As much as Trump genuinely enjoys burgers, this born-and-bred member of the elite knows this kind of absurd “man of the people” posturing endears him to a certain US demographic. The same demographic most likely to be afflicted by the out-of-control global obesity epidemic, leading to potentially life-threatening conditions, most of which won’t be covered by their healthcare plans and which the likes of Trump would condemn as self-inflicted. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem quite so charming that Trump served junk food at the White House.

History and Archaeology

Europe’s Largest Hoard Of Copper Age Axes, Ax Hammers Discovered In Northeast Bulgaria

22 copper axe heads; they appear to be unused, which suggests that they may have had ritual or prestige value.

The tools are dated to the Late Chalcolithic (Late Copper Age), more specifically, 4,500 – 4,200 BC.

Science and Nature

The oceans are warming faster than we thought, and scientists suggest we brace for impact

H/T mrsmig Video: Fox, romping in the snow

Society

A third of US workers have left a job due to caregiving responsibilities

Women’s Work

This is what the Women’s March actually wants

The Women’s Agenda details 24 federal policy priorities for which the organization will advocate. They include universal healthcare, passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, ending war, the expansion of voting rights, ending the student debt crisis, protecting the rights of trans women, and a move toward renewable energy.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Via Dan Balz, Correspondent The Washington Post: ’Would you like to speak to the president?’

PARIS — “Would you like to speak to the president?

That was about the last question I expected from a stranger on a Friday night in Paris.

Via The Atlantic: Impeach Donald Trump

On january 20, 2017, Donald Trump stood on the steps of the Capitol, raised his right hand, and solemnly swore to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He has not kept that promise.

Instead, he has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal.

See Also: Unthinkable: 50 Moments That Define an Improbable Presidency

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

H/T cbenoi1: Canadian Air Traffic Controllers Buy Pizza For American Colleagues Affected By U.S. Government ShutdownIf employers aren’t acknowledging the demands their workers face at home, they probably aren’t managing the fallout very effectively.

You should read this for 12/12/2019:

Art and Film

Books, Writing, and Language

H/T Lisa Carnell: Letter of Recommendation: Old English

I’ve got no interest in establishing any personal connection between their culture and mine. That’s for the historians and the fantasists. I’m just interested in the words. There are ways of expressing feeling in the Old English kennings that do not exist in the formal English of today. 

Original Drawings by J.R.R. Tolkien Are Coming to New York’s Morgan Library

A collection of British fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien’s original drawings and illustrations will make a rare appearance in the U.S. this month. As AM New York reports, works from the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries will be traveling across the pond to New York City, where they’ll go on display at The Morgan Library & Museum.

This is a really wonderful opportunity; go if you can. January 25 to May 12, 2019.

Does It Pay to Be a Writer? “The decline in earnings are largely because of Amazon’s lion’s share of the self-publishing, e-book and resale market.”

Writing has never been a lucrative career choice, but a recent study by the Authors Guild, a professional organization for book writers, shows that it may not even be a livable one anymore. According to the survey results, the median pay for full-time writers was $20,300 in 2017, and that number decreased to $6,080 when part-time writers were considered. The latter figure reflects a 42 percent drop since 2009, when the median was $10,500. These findings are the result of an expansive 2018 study of more than 5,000 published book authors, across genres and including both traditional and self-published writers.

7 Publishing Insights Revealed By Last Year’s Top 100 Bestselling Books See also The 100 bestselling books of 2018 which partly inspired the previous link; it’s an article about 2018 publishing trends based on Nielsen Bookscan 31/12/17-8/12/18

Food and Drink

Real Maine Baked Beans

Baked beans, cooked slowly in the oven for hours in a covered bean pot, are a Maine tradition. So are yellow-eye beans.

First, let’s just say that Yellow Eyes won the most votes, if you will, for the best bean to use. In Maine, those come from State of Maine Beans in a two pound bag at most grocery stores. There were a smattering of Jacobs Cattle, Soldier Beans, Great Northerns, and a few will favor Marafax. A couple mentioned pea beans, but for the most part, Mainers like big beans.

History and Archaeology

Bath Tiles “Brightly colored tiles have been uncovered during excavations in advance of restoration of England’s Bath Abbey.”

Easter Island statues: mystery behind their location revealed

Researchers say they have analysed the locations of the megalithic platforms, or ahu, on which many of the statues known as moai sit, as well as scrutinising sites of the island’s resources, and have discovered the structures are typically found close to sources of fresh water.

Science and Nature

VIA NPR’s Bird Note (H/T Anne B): House Sparrows Can Open Doors

Clues into early development of autism spectrum disorder Neurons from people with autism exhibit different patterns of growth and develop at a faster rate”

Society

One easy New Year’s resolution to help save democracy in 2019: Go to the library

Technology

Via Nieman Lab: Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A Long, Slow Slog, With No One Coming To The Rescue

“Much of the news currently published online is simply not worth paying for. Some of it is hardly worth our fleeting attention, let alone hard-earned cash.”

How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually.

“I love my Mac!” Zoë Smith’s spouse is a new Mac user and as she writes:

I love my Mac, of course. But seeing someone else fall in love too, again, today? Pretty sweet.

Facebook Shared User Data with Other Tech Giants

Women’s Work

Via NPR: What It Looks Like To Have A Record Number Of Women In The House Of Representatives

I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman

“Black babies in the United States die at just over two times the rate of white babies in the first year of their life,” says Arthur James, an OB-GYN at Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State University in Columbus. When my daughter died, she and I became statistics.

H/T: Lisa Carnell via NPR: A Blue Clue In Medieval Teeth May Bespeak A Woman’s Artistry Circa A.D. 1000

Work pants and my fight for pocket equality.

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Medievalist Matthew Gabriele: Trump says medieval walls worked. They didn’t. And from another historian, David Perry: Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Muslim youth group cleans up national parks amid government shutdown

Across the country, dozens of their colleagues in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association were doing the same at national parks closed or partially closed by the shutdown. They cleaned up litter, emptied garbage cans and swept the grounds — from the Everglades National Park in Florida to Joshua Tree, California and the Cuyahoga Valley, Ohio.

Via NPR: Florida Law Restoring The Vote To Former Felons Takes Effect Before the referendum passed

more than 10 percent of Florida’s adult population was not eligible to vote. Desmond Meade who helped organize the referendum campaign says that changed Nov. 6. “We had over 5.1 million voters that voted yes on Amendment 4,” he says. “Not one of those votes was based on hate. Not one of those votes was based on fear, but rather votes of love.”

You should read this for 1/5/2019:

Art and Film

Chip By Chip, Restoring The Damaged Washington National Cathedral

H/T Heather: Wabanaki basketmakers try to save our state’s ash trees — and their traditional craft — from the emerald ash borer.

Books, Writing, and Language

Why you should surround yourself with more books than you’ll ever have time to read An overstuffed bookcase (or e-reader) says good things about your mind.

See also: Umberto Eco’s Antilibrary: Why Unread Books Are More Valuable to Our Lives than Read Ones

Bottleneck at Printers Has Derailed Some Holiday Book Sales

Agents and authors say part of the problem is that publishers and retailers have become more risk averse. Publishers are printing smaller first runs, partly because retailers are ordering fewer copies initially, waiting to see which titles take off to avoid making the wrong bet and getting stuck storing unsold inventory. In the past, it was often easy to get another batch of books printed in a week or two if a title sold unexpectedly well, but these days some publishers say it can take one or two months.

For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain

What the Earliest Texts Say About the Invention of Writing

Food and Drink

The Original Hot Buttered Rum Recipe

This is one version; it makes a batter of sorts. I prefer a much simpler version, that’s about six ounces of hot water, a dash of rum, a sprinkle of cinnamon or nutmeg, a small 1/2 teaspoon or so of butter, and a teaspoon of brown sugar or honey.

Top 10 Wines Under $10 For 2018

History and Archaeology

The Modern History of Ornithology Starts With This Inquisitive Medieval Emperor “Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor born on this day in 1194, is remembered for fighting with the Pope so much he was excommunicated, for promoting literature and science in Sicily and for his fascination with birds.”

Science and Nature

More than 50 Australian plant species face extinction within decade ‘Study finds just 12 of the most imperilled species are listed under national environment laws as critically endangered”

The scientists concluded that 55 species were at high risk of extinction within the next 10 years, with fewer than 250 individual plants or only a single population remaining. They found just 12 of the most imperilled species were listed under the EPBC Act as critically endangered and 13 had no listing at all.

Risky business: linking Toxoplasma gondiiinfection and entrepreneurship behaviours across individuals and countries See also: Toxoplasma gondii

H/T Frances: We Need a New Christmas Bird

An ant colony has memories that its individual members don’t have

Society

Those End-Of-The-Year Charitable Donations May Not Help Your Tax Bill

Rick Cohen, with the National Council of Nonprofits in Washington, D.C., estimatesthat charities and nonprofits such as churches, will see big drops in donations in the coming year. The drop in charitable giving could top 20 billion dollars nationwide because more people will take the standard deduction as opposed to itemizing.

‘It’s not fair, not right’: how America treats its black farmers

“The tactics are to strangle the life from all the black farmers, and it’s being done in multiple ways,” says Sanders. “And the US government is as much in on the strangling as any other entity … and has generally been complicit in running hundreds of thousands of black folks off the farm, and destroying their way of life.”

Women’s Work

H/T Frances: The 97-Year-Old Park Ranger Who Doesn’t Have Time for Foolishness “As the oldest career National Park Service ranger, Betty Soskin is unabashed about revealing all of America’s history—and her optimism about our future.”

She also offers a blueprint on how not to despair about our times. “Democracy has been experiencing these periods of chaos since 1776. They come and go,” she says. “And it’s in those periods that democracy is redefined.” When everything seems to be crumbling, we can remold and reset, she believes: “History has been written by people who got it wrong, but the people who are always trying to get it right have prevailed. If that were not true, I would still be a slave like my great-grandmother.”

H/T Jasmin: The female powerhouse who developed 1920s Downtown LA

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Splitting With Trump Over Syria, American Leading ISIS Fight Steps Down

Mr. McGurk, a seasoned diplomat who was considered by many to be the glue holding together the sprawling international coalition fighting the terrorist group, was supposed to retire in February. But according to an email he sent his staff, he decided to move his departure forward to Dec. 31 after Mr. Trump did not heed his own commanders and blindsided America’s allies in the region by abruptly ordering the withdrawal of the 2,000 troops.

Trump EPA Says Mercury Limits On Coal Plants Too Costly, Not ‘Necessary’

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

The ‘angel’ who secretly pays patients’ hospital bills

“That’s why I call this the Angel Project,” he says. “Be the angel you hope to meet.”

You should read this for 12/22/2018:

Art and Film

A neighbor anonymously called Christmas dragons in her yard ‘demonic.’ So she put more up.

Books, Writing, and Language

The ‘Future Book’ Is Here, But It’s Not What We Expected

The Minefield Of Mime: ‘Halt’ To An American Signifies ‘Hi’ To An Arab “Dictionary of Gestures: Expressive Comportments and Movements in Use Around the World by François Caradec reviewed”

Education

DeVos To Rescind Obama-Era Guidance On School Discipline “The recommendations on discipline form part of a broader effort by the Trump administration and U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to back away from Obama-era policies aimed at reducing racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions.”

Florida lawmakers mandated armed guards in schools after Parkland. One just killed three people.

Food and Drink

Via Twitter: Hilary Clinton, Hot Saucer, Peppers and Stupid People

In 2016, a host asked Hillary Clinton what’s something she always has in her bag. “Hot sauce,” she said. Critics claimed she said this to pander to black voters because of Beyoncé’s “hot sauce in my bag” lyric.

But she has been talking about hot sauce in her bag for 20+ years.

Irish-American Whiskey Celebrates Shared Heritage

In a nod to both sides of the Atlantic, distillers are blending whiskey from each country, using American wine barrels and reviving old Irish recipes. Explore the world of Irish-American whiskey with these five bottles.

History and Archaeology

Egypt announces discovery of 4,400-year-old tomb

Egypt has announced the discovery of a private tomb belonging to a senior official from the 5th dynasty of the pharaohs, which ruled roughly 4,400 years ago. There are photographs

Science and Nature

Pterosaurs: Fur flies over feathery fossils

Two exceptionally well preserved fossils give a new picture of the pterosaurs, the flying reptiles that lived at the time of the dinosaurs.
Scientists believe the creatures may have had feathers, and looked something like brown bats with fuzzy wings.
The surprise discovery suggests feathers evolved not in birds, nor dinosaurs, but in more distant times.

H/T to SJS: The Northern Cardinal Is Actually Multiple Species, Evidence Suggests

The actual paper title is: Genomic divergence in allopatric Northern Cardinals of the North American warm deserts is linked to behavioral differentiation. Basically, it’s looking like there are at least two distinct species, separated for c. 1 million years, based on genetics and song behavior.

Society

‘Self-promoters’ do nothing but still get ahead at work

But about one in five teams was a conundrum – where staff appeared to be very engaged, but where teamwork and productivity were poor.
The study found when “lifting the lid” on these groups of workers, that they were undermined by staff who were successfully “gaming the system” but not really getting anything done.
They might constantly appear in a circuit of meetings, or get involved in conversations that were to their own advantage — but apart from playing the corporate culture, it was difficult to see what they actually achieved.

Via BuzzFeed: Hate To Break It To You, But The Amazing Glitter Bomb Package Video Is Pretty Much Staged

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Technology

Via Motherboard: We Should Replace Facebook With Personal Websites “Personal websites and email can replace most of what people like about Facebook—namely the urge to post about their lives online.

Women’s Work

Gladys West, the ‘hidden figure’ of GPS, inducted into Air Force hall of fame

Life on the land with the Lama Lama rangers – a picture essay

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Amphibian that buries head in sand named after Donald Trump Newly discovered Panama amphibian Dermophis donaldtrumpi buries its head in the sand has been named after 💩🔥💰, because of his comments about climate change.

The small, blind, creature is a type of caecilian that primarily lives underground, and Mr Bell drew an unflattering comparison between its behaviour and Mr Trump’s.
“Burrowing [his] head underground helps Donald Trump when avoiding scientific consensus on anthropomorphic climate change,” [Bell] wrote.

Russian Agents Sought Secret US Treasury Records On Clinton Backers During 2016 Campaign

In an astonishing departure from protocol, documents show that at the same time the requests were being made, Treasury officials were using their government email accounts to send messages back and forth with a network of private Hotmail and Gmail accounts set up by the Russians, rather than communicating through the secure network usually used to exchange information with other countries.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Jackets left on lampposts in Inverness for homeless “Winter jackets have been left buttoned and zipped round lampposts in Inverness along with a note inviting any finders in need of a coat to take it.”

Penn Library Will Return 9th-Century Documents Found to Have Been Stolen From Italian Archive

You should read this for 12/15/2018:

Art and Film

Via The Getty: The Renaissance Nude

Books, Writing, and Language

A Pleasure to Read You

“Shouldn’t literature enchant, surprise, and teach us? And to make this happen, shouldn’t we be the most expert readers we can be?”

What all these interested parties are saying is that a successful work of literature depends on a successful reading of its contents, and that the pleasure involved derives from the text’s power to immerse us, enchant us, surprise us, and teach us. So far so good. But how do I know that you find the same pleasure in the same lines, passages, and books that I do?

Via Columbia Journalism Review What’s behind a recent rise in books coverage?

IF IT OCCASIONALLY FEELS like nobody reads books, anymore—that we are indeed witnessing the slow death of the literary novel, and the rapid decline of leisure reading, and the steady increase of American non-readers—why is it that mainstream publications are writing more about them?

This piece by Sam Eichner discussed the increase in publications covering books, and book reviews, and the increase in coverage by publications (and Web sites) who already reviewed books. One of the bits that particularly caught my eye was this:

BuzzFeed News Books Editor Arianna Rebolini says. “As far as the online world, of course, you’re not limited, but time is. And are you going to put your time into something that’s not going to share well?”

Education

Food and Drink

Homemade Tartar Sauce “How to make tartar sauce with mayonnaise, dill pickles, capers, mustard, shallots, scallions, Tabasco and lemon juice. Perfect with fish or crab cakes.”

History and Archaeology

Identity of Little Foot fossil stirs controversy

More than 20 years ago, paleoanthropologists began to painstakingly excavate the rock-encased skeleton of an ancient hominid from deep inside a South African cave. Last week, they offered the first in-depth measurements of the skeleton dubbed “Little Foot,” the most complete ancient hominin in the fossil record. Now, researchers say the skeleton is of an elderly female, about 3.67 million years old, and a member of the genus Australopithecus. But how she fits into the broader picture of hominin evolution—and which species she belongs to—has sparked fierce debate among competing teams.

A Meteor may have Exploded in the Air 3,700 Years Ago, Obliterating Communities Near the Dead Sea

A meteor that exploded in the air near the Dead Sea 3,700 years ago may have wiped out communities, killed tens of thousands of people, and provided the kernel of truth to an old Bible story. The area is in modern-day Jordan, in a 25 km wide circular plain called Middle Ghor. Most of the evidence for this event comes from archaeological evidence excavated at the Bronze Age city of Tall el-Hammam located in that area, which some scholars say is the city of Sodom from the Bible.

“Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. 25 Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.” – Genesis 19:24-25

Science and Nature

Hidden Gems: Scotland’s Agates

CNN: According to the Deep Carbon Observatory Scientists discover billions of tons of ‘zombie’ bacteria inhabits the ground beneath our feet

The biomass of the organisms’ ecosystem is estimated at 15 to 23 billion metric tonnes (16.6 to 25.4 billion tons), which is hundreds of times greater than that of all human life, and comprises a volume of 2 to 2.3 billion cubic kilometers (480 to 550 million cubic miles) — almost twice that of all the planet’s oceans.

See also Nature’s Scientists Reveal a Massive Biosphere of Life Hidden Under Earth’s Surface

“Exploring the deep subsurface is akin to exploring the Amazon rainforest,” says microbiologist Mitch Sogin from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
“There is life everywhere, and everywhere there’s an awe-inspiring abundance of unexpected and unusual organisms.”
These lifeforms aren’t just unusual for their appearance and habitat, but the actual way they exist, with incredibly slow and long life cycles drawn out over near-geologic timescales, and – in the absence of sunlight – subsisting on meagre amounts of chemical energy harvested from their rocky surroundings.
“The strangest thing for me is that some organisms can exist for millennia,” Lloyd explained to The Guardian.
“They are metabolically active but in stasis, with less energy than we thought possible of supporting life.”

What’s Next for NASA’s Voyager 2 in Interstellar Space?

WASHINGTON — Voyager 2 has passed an incredible milestone in its journey to explore the solar system by entering interstellar space, but neither its travels nor its science are ending any time soon.

NASA Already Made a Surprising Discovery About The Asteroid They Only Just Reached Bennu or a larger parent asteroid, once contained liquid water.

A lone spacecraft is hovering 12 miles above the surface of a tiny asteroid millions of miles away, closely examining its surface. And it just sent back its first readings.
As part of NASA’s Origins Program, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft traveled to an asteroid called Bennu some 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) from the Sun, finally arriving at the 1,600-foot-wide (487-meter) asteroid on December 3.

Society

Is Gender Identity Unique to Humans?

Doctors Are Being Cyberbullied: Why That’s Bad, and How We’re Fighting Back

Technology

Is US military cloud safe from Russia? Fears over sensitive data “A technology company bidding for a Pentagon contract to store sensitive data has close partnerships with a firm linked to a sanctioned Russian oligarch, the BBC has learned.”

Top military secrets will be transferred to the Jedi cloud, including classified details about weapons systems, military personnel, intelligence and operations.

This is such a bad idea that my stomach hurts just thinking about it.

Women’s Work

A Woman’s Uterus May Play a Role in Memory and Cognition

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Trump administration slow to grant Native Americans land, say tribes

The Native American tribe to first meet the Pilgrims, the Mashpee Wampanoag, are at risk of losing their land due to a move by the US government to reverse the tribe’s recognition. The National Congress of American Indians worry this is an emerging pattern.

Mashpee Wampanoag Phillip Wynne, of Sagamore, Mass., pours water to control fire and temperatures while making a mishoon, a type of boat, from a tree at the Wampanoag Homesite at Plimoth Plantation, in Plymouth, Mass.

Mayors And Governors Rebut Trump Administration Position At Climate Summit

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

U.S. returns bells looted after Philippine wartime massacre

You should read this for 12/8/2018:

Art and Film

Secrets of the Magus

Ricky Jay does closeup magic that flouts reality. But, rather than headline in Las Vegas, Jay prefers to live in the mysterious world of ancient mountebanks, eccentric entertainers, and sleight-of-hand artists, whose secrets he preserves with a scholarly passion, and who are his true peers in the realm of illusion.

Lara Feigel in The Guardian: How free is free love? How polyamory lost its allure

Getty museum must return 2,000-year-old statue, Italian court rules

Doctor Who backlash shows why it’s time to bin the phrase “politically correct”

Books, Writing, and Language

The Steward of Middle-earth

Education

Degrees of Ignorance

Should Studying Literature Be Fun?

Food and Drink

Melting Potatoes

Actor Tituss Burgess on His Pinot Noir

Bourbon Mashed Sweet Potatoes

History and Archaeology

The boozy and violent story behind America’s Eggnog Riot

Scientists Discovered The Oldest Human Plague. It Took Down Neolithic Farmers And Changed Europe’s History

Buried among 77 other people from her village in western Sweden are the bones of a 20 year-old woman. Now an analysis of DNA extracted from her teeth reveals what likely killed her. An international team of researchers has discovered the woman, who died some 5,000 years ago, had the oldest known case of the plague.

Ava A Woman from Scotland 4,250 Years Ago

Science and Nature

“We’re sounding the alarm”: half of Canada’s chinook salmon endangered “Only one of the country’s 16 populations is believed to be stable.”

“The really big overarching stressor is climate change,” said Hill. “That’s creating less favourable conditions for our fish in the ocean and the freshwater – and that’s exacerbated by all these other stressors.”

Society

Australia cuts plastic bag use by 80% in 3 months after supermarket ban

It was a rocky start. But three months later Australia reports an 80 percent reduction in plastic bag consumption, a cut that kept as many as 1.5 plastic bags from entering the environment, according to Australia’s National Retail Association.

Technology

Apple Computer’s Tim Cook: ‘We won’t give a platform to violent conspiracy theorists’

The debate as to whether tech platforms should let hate groups or conspiracy theorists remain on their platforms reached a fever pitch this year. That’s when Apple made a statement about conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, removing his InfoWars podcast from iTunes and his app from the App Store.

SubEthaEdit 5 – Now free and open source!

Photolemur photo editor available Thursday in Klingon, reveals Apple leadership to be aliens

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Women’s Work

Michelle Obama’s Take On “Lean In”? “That &#%! Doesn’t Work”

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

A Dutch church has been conducting religious services for 27 days to protect a refugee family

For the past 27 days, a small Protestant church in The Hague has been conducting round-the-clock religious services to protect an Armenian refugee family from deportation.

H/T @/_JDBurroughs_ Inexpensive Mylar blankets could save lives You can buy mylar blankets online very cheaply and they are small and easy to to carry around in a purse or bag to give to any rough sleepers you see.

It could save lives this winter.

DonorsChoose.org: Support a classroom. Build a future. Teachers all over the U.S. need your help to bring their classroom dreams to life. Choose a project that inspires you and give any amount.

Two Women Erased $1.5 Million of Strangers’ Medical Debt Just Because They Felt Like It I’ve posted about this before, but it’s still happening. 

You should read this for 11/17/2018:

Art and Film

The world’s oldest figurative drawing depicts a wounded animal “The 40,000-year-old cave painting in a cave in Borneo depicts a speared animal.”

New radiometric dating identifies the oldest known figurative drawing—not a stenciled outline of a hand or an abstract design, but an actual attempt to depict a real object in an image. As far as we know, a cave wall in Indonesian Borneo was the site for the first time a person drew something, rather than just making abstract marks. The drawing is at least 40,000 years old, based on uranium-series dating of a thin layer of rock deposited on top of the drawing since its creation.

 

Books, Writing, and Language

From Madonna’s Sex to Lady Chatterley: inside the Bodleian’s explicit book club “Created at the height of Victorian prudishness, the Bodleian Library’s Phi collection was designed to protect young minds from “immoral” books. More than a century later, they’re going on display for the first time”

The One Direction Fan-Fiction Novel That Became a Literary Sensation

Isabel Allende’s Unconventional Advice for Finding Writing Inspiration

‘Ignore this’: Jonathan Franzen’s top 10 writing tips get gleefully trolled on Twitter

American novelist Jonathan Franzen has drawn the ire of fellow writers, who are mercilessly trolling him following an article in which he lists his 10 writing rules for aspiring novelists.

Education

UW-Stevens Point Eliminating 6 Majors In Humanities To Address Budget Shortfall

The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point is eliminating six degree programs in the humanities to address budget deficits and increasing drops in enrollment. The changes are aimed at creating a new regional university model that is more career focused, according to the university.
The university originally proposed cutting 13 degree programs, which led to student protestson campus and a sit in at the UW System Board of Regents office in Madison. The six majors that will be cut include: French, German, geography, geology, history, and two- and three-dimensional art, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

What the article doesn’t specify is that the years of budget cuts took place because of the actions of Scott Walker.

The Chronicle of Higher Education interviews historian Jill Lepore: ‘The Academy Is Largely Itself Responsible for Its Own Peril’ “Jill Lepore on writing the story of America, the rise and fall of the fact, and how women’s intellectual authority is undermined”

Lepore’s history of America Jill Lepore’s These Truths is a NYT bestseller. I’m looking forward to reading it.

Food and Drink

Vitamin D And Fish Oil Supplements Disappoint In Long-Awaited Study Results

But:

While the overall results were disappointing, there appeared to be a beneficial effect when it came to one aspect of heart disease and fish oil: heart attacks.

Taking fish oil lowered the risk of heart attack by about 28 percent, which is a “statistically significant” finding, says Dr. JoAnn Manson, who is chief of the division of preventive medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She led the research.

And see also: Cardiovascular Risk Reduction with Icosapent Ethyl for Hypertriglyceridemia

Patients with elevated triglyceride levels are at increased risk for ischemic events. Icosapent ethyl, a highly purified eicosapentaenoic acid ethyl ester, lowers triglyceride levels, but data are needed to determine its effects on ischemic events.

Ars Technica on Homebrewing cider

American Winemakers Are Getting In On The Fun Of Beaujolais Nouveau

The third Thursday of every November is Beaujolais Nouveau Day. Made from gamay, the primary grape in Beaujolais, a winemaking region in eastern France, traditional Nouveau is bottled not long after the harvest and is only about two months old when you traditionally uncork it. . . . Beaujolais Nouveau isn’t just hype. It’s a way for winemakers to celebrate the end of the harvest, a two-month period of intense work—picking and sorting grapes by hand and then pressing and bottling them into wine.

Via Clare Smyth in The Guardian: Gordon Ramsey’s Broccoli Soup

History and Archaeology

Eerie recording reveals moment the guns fell silent at the end of WWI

On the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, the guns fell silent. It brought an end to four years of war which crippled Europe, leaving 17 million dead including 888,246 British or Colonial servicemen. As we approach the centenary of the Armistice on November 11, the Imperial War Museum has released a recording of the moment the war ended, patched together using recordings from their collections.

‘Moai are family’: Easter Island people to head to London to request statue back “Delegation from island, backed by Chilean government, will ask for return of statue British Museum acquired in 1869”

Towering at the entrance of the British Museum’s Wellcome gallery is a 2.5-metre basalt statue from Easter Island. For indigenous Rapa Nui islanders, such statues — known as moai – carry the spirit of prominent ancestors and are considered the living incarnation of their relatives.

Next week, a delegation from the island – which has been part of Chile since 1888 and is officially known as Rapa Nui – will travel to London to request the moai’s return, emboldened by the backing of the Chilean government and the museum’s willingness to engage in talks for the first time since it acquired the statue in 1869.

Science and Nature

The 26-foot-long “unicorn of the sea” is a lesson in the wonders of collaboration

Pyrosomes, also known as unicorns of the sea, are exceptional evidence of the advantages of cooperation. These colonies of creatures, made up of hundreds or thousands of individual organisms known as zooids, travel together in a single gelatinous tunic.

Stunning astronaut photos show Australia’s outback “like an open geology book”

Society

Children in care homes: ‘It makes residents feel more human’ “The more time young and old people spend together, the more both parties benefit”

Why are attitudes to meat so complex and personal? I draw the line at cephalopods

I eat all sorts of creatures, but I won’t touch octopus – which only exposes my hypocrisy and our complicated relationship with food

This encapsulates my own feeling about octopus. And I’m not apologetic about it.

How moving to the US made me appreciate the House of Lords

One major issue is voter suppression, which is (currently) barely a thing in the UK. Methods vary from state to state, but there’s a clear trend: disenfranchisement of predominately working-class, African American, Latino and other minority voters in places where Republicans control the state legislature. In Georgia, roughly 700,000 were purged from electoral rolls in 2017 without being informed and this year 53,000 people, 70% of whom were African American, were prevented from registering to vote for reasons as trivial as a misplaced hyphen. This process was overseen by then secretary of state Brian Kemp, who just happens to have also been Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial candidate for the GOP – and who seems to have beaten Democrat Stacey Abrams, the first black woman in history to be a major party’s nominee for governor, by a very narrow margin.

After NRA Mocks Doctors, Physicians Reply: “This Is Our Lane”

Technology

Rural Kids Face An Internet “Homework Gap”. The FCC Could Help

Seth Abramson’s Metamodernism Preceded His Resistance “He has played ‘metamodernist’ games throughout his career.”

Do we have a moral obligation to quit Facebook? and also: Facebook hired firm with ‘in-house fake news shop’ to combat PR crisis and Facebook probably didn’t want to be denying it paid people to create fake news this week, but here we are

💩🔥💰 Trumpery 💩🔥💰

Via John R. Schlinder in The Observer: Team Mueller is Holding ‘Dozens of Sealed Indictments,’ According to Intel Source

Veterans haven’t received GI Bill benefits for months due to ongoing IT issues at VA “This is — to be kind — a train wreck,” said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.

Without the GI Bill’s housing stipend, Roundtree was kicked out of his apartment and is now living on his sister’s couch, miles from school, where he feels like a burden on his family. The new living situation required him to move all his belongings into a storage container, which he can no longer afford. Now all of his possessions are in danger of being auctioned off by the storage facility.

This Is the Saturday Night Massacre

With the firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, America is in uncharted territory. The last time a president made a personnel change to undermine an investigation of his associates, Congress forced him to resign. That was when President Richard Nixon pushed out his attorney general and deputy attorney general so he could fire the special prosecutor. The fallout from this Saturday Night Massacre, as it is known, has stood as a warning to subsequent presidents. Yet President Trump has launched a piecemeal Saturday Night Massacre of his own. He first fired FBI Director James Comey last year for his handling of the Russia probe, then he fired the attorney general for failing to protect him from the Russia probe. His intent to undermine an investigation of his campaign has been clear throughout—he barely tried to hide it—but the difference this time is that he has acted with impunity. What comes next could be anything.

Melania Trump racked up $174,000 in hotel bills for a day trip to Toronto

How Trump and her staff ran up nearly $200,000 in hotel bills for a 12-hour trip is unclear (the total was nearly double the $95,050 bill for a hotel in Cairo, Egypt, where she stopped for a day last month during a trip to Africa). All six charges for the first lady’s Toronto hotel bills were paid to “miscellaneous foreign awardees” rather than a specific hotel.

Women’s Work

‘The lesson is to be hopeful’: Ilhan Omar’s journey from Somali refugee to US Congress

Ilhan Omar, who lived in a Somali refugee camp when she was a girl and was elected to the US Congress last week, has said she hopes her victory would give hope to those whose childhoods resembled hers.

Someone tried roasting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ wardrobe, and got meme’d

Women and the first world war: a taste of freedom “For many women on the home front, the war years became a springboard to liberation. But with peace came the backlash.”

‘They see no shame’: ‘honour’ killing video shows plight of Syrian women

“These are people who see no shame in killing the girl, but actually believe it’s what washes away the shame she has brought on the whole family,” says exiled Syrian writer Loubna Mrie. “An innocent girl is dead because some guy posted her pictures on Facebook.”

Nina Totenberg via NPR: How A Lawyer In The CNN Case Saved Me From Being Shut Down On My Beat

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Wallace & Gromit‘s Creators Are Giving The Company to Their Employees “Aardman Animation will be giving majority shares to their workers.”

Two Cats Have Spent Two Years Trying To Get Into A Japanese Art Museum

Why I’m helping people fight their biases

How to be kind at work, no matter how you’re feeling

If you think your workplace could use a little more kindness, one of the first steps you can take is to recognize that kindness is an action.

Some great, simple non-demanding ways to make the day better for you, and someone else.

You should read this for 11/10/2018:

Art and Film

Murdered mob boss gave stolen Boston art to IRA, says former Met detective

Rembrandt and Vermeer masterpieces taken in 1990 heist linked to James “Whitey” Bulger are stashed in Ireland, says sleuth.

Extreme Sheep-Herding With LED Lights “Baaastud’s multifaceted team visits the hills of Wales to lightly promote Samsung LED TV sets with the help of sheep fitted with LED vests.”

Books, Writing, and Language

Our book launch was botched and it’s been crazy at work trying to fix it

Education

“Phenomenally saddening”: inside the sordid world of America’s for-profit colleges “The new documentary Fail State, executive produced by Dan Rather, tells the 50-year tale of profit-driven colleges scamming society’s most vulnerable”

Relying heavily on federal student loans, from which it took $1.4bn in yearly revenue, Corinthian was on the brink of collapse after the department of education halted the company’s flow of federal funding due to evidence of rampant fraud in its reporting of grades and job placements.

Corinthian, a behemoth of the for-profit college industry that marketed its vocational and post-secondary programs to single mothers at or below the poverty line, was already under investigation by various federal agencies, the education department, and 20 different state attorneys general when it said it could not operate for more than a few days without an influx of cash.

And this is particularly important:

That the president himself once ran a criminal for-profit education company – and that he’d appoint in education secretary Betsy DeVos a willing foot soldier for their cause – was not something Shebanow and his team anticipated when they began work on Fail State back in 2013. The saga of Trump University has been well-documented, but DeVos’s overtures toward the for-profit industry, including the elimination or rollback of Obama-era gainful employment and student borrower defense regulations, have gone mostly under the radar. DeVos, the director explains, is also tinkering with rules mandating “substantive teacher-student interaction”, which ensures students at for-profits are not navigating their coursework alone.

Food and Drink

Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon Recipe as a .pdf from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

History and Archaeology

Thomas Becket’s bloody tunic returns to Canterbury 850 years after he died

Vatican to send back historic relic worn by archbishop as he was brutally murdered

How to explain the KGB’s amazing success identifying CIA agents in the field? “Paranoid CIA heads blamed Soviet moles, but the real reason for the repeated disasters was much simpler”

A Ramp Contraption May Have Been Used to Build Egypt’s Great Pyramid “The finding could help answer a longstanding question of how massive stone blocks were hauled into place.”

“It was very hard for him”: relatives remember first world war survivors

The Kindertransport children 80 years on: “I was bowled over that these non-Jewish people were nice to us”

Music

The Freddie Mercury biopic isn’t homophobic – it’s inspiring

Back with the real Beatles: the White Album reviewed – archive, 1968 “Fifty years ago, the Guardian printed two reviews of The Beatles and recommended listening to ‘what is likely to be the biggest event of the pop music year’ in stereo”

What the Beatles Sounded Like Unedited “Fifty years after its debut, The White Album has been reissued to include demos and sessions, giving listeners a wider lens through which to examine the seminal work from the band.”

Science and Nature

World’s largest deep-sea octopus nursery discovered

Scientists discovered over 1,000 females, many brooding eggs, in a shimmering “octopus garden” that may be seeping natural gas or hot water.

Recent Interstellar Asteroid May Have Been Alien Artifact, Speculates New Paper

Ocean floor rover finds large shark nursery in Irish waters “Vehicle discovers school of blackmouth catsharks around thousands of egg cases”

Millions of starfish are mysteriously dying, and now scientists think they know why

Society

The American civil war didn’t end. And Trump is a Confederate president

His supporters hark back to an 1860s fantasy of white male dominance. But the Confederacy won’t win in the long run. . . . It’s worth remembering that the Ku Klux Klan also hated Jews and, back then, Catholics; that the ideal of whiteness was anti-immigrant, anti-diversity, anti-inclusion; that Confederate flags went up not in the immediate post-war period of the 1860s but in the 1960s as a riposte to the civil rights movement.

I Didn’t Know I Was Intersex — Until I Made a Film About an Intersex Character

Experiences like mine are common for intersex people around the world. Vulnerable and scared parents adamantly follow doctors’ orders to “normalize” our bodies with unnecessary surgeries — removing or adding to our natural anatomies and pumping us with “corrective” hormones without consulting us about how we identify or how we feel. They fail to understand that gender, sex, and sexuality occur on a spectrum. Furthermore, doctors perpetuate the false idea that ‘no one is like us,’ — that we are not normal — keeping us in cycles of shame and immense loneliness. In fact, 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 people are intersex — it’s as common as having naturally red hair. Statistically, it’s likely that there is someone in your own community who is intersex but is perhaps too scared to be public about their identity (and understandably so).

Technology

Touring the recreated 1969 birthplace of the internet at UCLA

On October 29, 1969, UCLA grad student Charley Kline sat in a room in Boelter Hall and typed the first message on the ARPANET, the precursor to the modern internet. He wrote “lo;” before he could get to the “g” in “login” the system crashed.

Via NPR: Supreme Court Won’t Review Decision That OK’d Obama-Era Net Neutrality Rules

Still, the high court’s rejection preserves the appeals court’s decision as a possible precedent and makes it even more likely that the issue will resurface if the FCC shifts its makeup — something that would happen if Democrats are able to win back the White House in 2020.
The FCC’s repeal of net neutrality is also the subject of separate legal battles, after it was challenged by tech companies and advocacy groups, in addition to more than 20 U.S. states.

“He said jobs were coming back”: the Trump voters who feel cheated

“I wanted to believe in Mr Trump,” one manufacturing worker laid off after 30 years says. “This has been a slap in the face”

Trump wants voters to think the US economy is booming – is it?

As the Federal Reserve raises rates, stock markets are wobbling, and Trump has publicly attacked the Fed, an unprecedented move for a sitting president. China’s growth is stalling, Europe once more looks like it is heading for trouble, some economists are predicting a recession next year.

Greg Miller. The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy. The Apprentice review: Trump, Putin and the subversion of US democracy

“All of this happened,” Miller writes. But instead of it happening in secret, nearly all of it occurred in plain sight, overwhelming the ability of most journalists to keep up and preventing millions of average voters from reaching the rather obvious conclusion that Trump is Vladimir Putin’s apprentice.

US democracy is in crisis. But Trump is only the symptom

This situation points to the true constitutional crisis that afflicts the United States. The fact that Trump is president and the fact that the Senate and supreme court are, if not in his hands, then at least likely to back him, are not the cause of this crisis – they are symptoms of it.

The bitter reality for journalists covering a president who lies, and lies, and lies some more

Trump slams “stupid question” from female reporter, calls April Ryan a “loser”

AP: Video expert says White House clip of CNN reporter was likely doctored [Updated]

The video is altered, Shapiro told the AP, to make Acosta’s actions as he held on to the microphone look faster and more aggressive. Shapiro noted that one first indicator that the video is not an original is that the sound has been removed, which makes it easier to alter frames. Next, in a frame-by-frame comparison, several extra frames appear toward the beginning of the video, which would be true if a video manipulator was trying to slow the video down. Someone might do this if they later wanted to speed the video up, to keep the clip and its original a similar length. Sure enough, the White House’s clip appears sped up during the actual exchange between Acosta and the White House intern.

In photos: #ProtectMueller protests in cities all across America See also: #ProtectMueller protests demand justice, “Trump is not above the law.” (Video, Photos)

Women’s Work

Setting sail: one woman’s year alone at sea

“She’s made us proud”: Ilhan Omar’s journey from Kenyan refugee camp to US Congress

Ilhan Omar, a Democrat, will assume office in January, sharing the historic distinction with Rashida Tlaib of being the first Muslim women elected to the US Congress.

Michelle Obama reveals miscarriage and condemns “reckless” Trump in new book

Gentleman Jack by Angela Steidele review – seductions of a secret diarist “A new account of a pioneering lesbian life draws on a diary with graphic descriptions of sex in code”

“I did it for every single girl”: the first Afghan woman to scale Mount Noshaq “Conquering Afghanistan’s highest peak was once unthinkable for Hanifa Yousoufi. Then she joined a climbing group, braving frostbite and the Taliban to strike a blow for gender equality”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is working from home today, because it’s just three broken ribs

Millennial congresswoman “can’t afford rent” “The youngest woman ever elected to Congress has a problem — she can’t afford her rent. That is until she starts her new job in January.”

Ms Ocasio-Cortez joins Republican Elise Stefanik, 34, and newly-elected Democrat Ilhan Omar, 36, amongst others, in the “millennial caucus” in Congress.

She was elected to New York’s 14th congressional district, after running a progressive campaign that focussed on issues like poverty, wealth inequality and immigration.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Business Statement for Transgender Equality

We, the undersigned businesses, stand with the millions of people in America who identify as transgender, gender non-binary, or intersex, and call for all such people to be treated with the respect and dignity everyone deserves.

We oppose any administrative and legislative efforts to erase transgender protections through reinterpretation of existing laws and regulations. We also fundamentally oppose any policy or regulation that violates the privacy rights of those that identify as transgender, gender non-binary, or intersex.

You should read this for 4/8/2018:

Art and Film

Introduce Your Kid to This Database of Paper Airplanes

Apple’s one-of-a-kind invitation art The art for the 350 invitation sent to journalists regarding the October 30th Apple event in Brooklyn, N.Y was different for each invitation. They’re all shown here.

Books, Writing, and Language

Browsing the Stacks: A Photo Appreciation of Libraries Some stunning and amazing libraries photographed, from all over the world. Much as I love my local public library in Seattle, there are many wonderful and beautiful libraries elsewhere.

Education and Academe

Via The Chronicle: What the ‘Grievance Studies’ Hoax Means

Does the hoax identify something uniquely rotten in gender and sexuality studies, or could it just as easily have targeted other fields? Is it a salutary correction or a reactionary hit job? And what does it portend for already imperiled fields? The Chronicle Review asked scholars from a variety of disciplines.

Via TLS: Tim Crane The peer review industry: implausible and outrageous

Browsing the Stacks: A Photo Appreciation of Libraries Some stunning and amazing libraries photographed, from all over the world.

Food and Drink

Grand Street Hot Toddy Cocktail “This low-alcohol drink mixes chamomile tea, amaro and sweet vermouth into a warm easy-sipping cocktail.”

History and Archaeology

The Hobby Lobby-funded Bible Museum says five of its Dead Sea Scrolls are fakes

Archaeologists discover a 2,400-year-old shipwreck, perfectly preserved

Ancient Stories Could Be More Fact Than Fiction

The Tjapwurung, an Aboriginal people in what is now southern Australia, shared the story of this bird hunt from generation to generation across an unbelievably large slice of time—many more millennia than one might think possible. The birds (most likely the species with the scientific name Genyornis newtoni) memorialized in this tale are now long extinct.

Discovery of Ancient Spearpoints in Texas Has Some Archaeologists Questioning the History of Early Americas

Archaeologists have discovered two previously unknown forms of spearpoint technology at a site in Texas. The triangular blades appear to be older than the projectile points produced by the Paleoamerican Clovis culture, an observation that’s complicating our understanding of how the Americas were colonized—and by whom.

Science and Nature

Magnificent “Voyager of the Moons” GIF from Cassini’s images from Jupiter and Saturn

Kevin M. Gill, a software engineer and data wrangler at NASA-JPL, created the fantastic video below “using still images taken by the Cassini spacecraft during its flyby of Jupiter and while at Saturn.”

The New Science of Sex and Gender

Society

‘It’s OK to be ourselves’: Atlanta’s black LGBT community in their own words

Technology

NASA brings a Hubble gyro back to life after a seven-year hibernation

 

💩🔥💰Trumpery

Groping suspect says 💩🔥💰 said it was OK to grab women

Why the Trump Administration’s New Gender Definition Worries Doctors “Discrimination against trans people is rife in the medical field, and it could get even worse if sex is defined as unchangeable.” Trump’s gender policy is both cruel and scientifically bankrupt

The administration’s definition of sex isn’t grounded in science. Even outside of transgender people, medical notions of gender rarely fit into two absolute, immutable, and mutually exclusive categories. There are lots of well-documented conditions where a person’s gender diverges from what their genes or genitals would indicate.

Trump’s midterms strategy: Lying his ass off to scare white people into voting Republican

Women’s Work

New Online: Diarist Documents Eventful Times on the Confederate Home Front

Women and girls are harassed ‘relentlessly’ from a young age, government report says

Women and girls are enduring street harassment “so frequently” that it is normalised to become “a routine part of everyday life,” a new government report has found.

See also:

The Trump administration says there are two sexes. The science says they’re wrong.

For example, babies with male chromosomes (XY) can can be born with testes but ambiguous genitalia, which can raise questions of gender assignment. Some women naturally produce lots of testosterone. People born with two XX chromosomes — who are typically female — may have a specific gene for male genitalia. And some people live for decades unaware that they share attributes of both sexes.

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

Plants For Birds

Bring birds to your home today by growing native plants. With Audubon’s Native Plant Database, you can find the best plants for the birds in your area. Growing bird-friendly plants will attract and protect the birds you love while making your space beautiful, easy to care for, and better for the environment. Explore all of our native plant resources here

How to be an ally who stands with transgender people

Stephen King sells film rights for story to Welsh teenagers for $1

Introducing 1Password for Democracy 1Password is offering free accounts to anyone running for political office

You should read this for 10/20/2018:

Art and Film

“Birds: Spiritual Messengers of the Skies” Audubon New Mexico has joined with The Center for New Mexico Archaeology — New Mexico Museum of Indian Arts and Culture to emphasize the importance of birds in our environment and cultures.

Books, Writing, and Language

Marvel fires Star Wars writer for ‘negativity’ against toxic fans on social media Chuck Wendig is fired by Marvel “Because of the negativity and vulgarity that my tweets bring.” You can see Wendig’s Twitter thread here, and his blog post In Which I Am Fired From Marvel explains the rest. Here are the essential points: Wendig included LGBT characters in Star Wars: Aftermath. Mind, these characters weren’t having Hot Queer Sex or anything; they just were quietly Not Straight. The mere existence  of queer characters incited the less astute members of SWars fandom to campaign against the Aftermath, and Wendig, including fake negative reviews that are startlingly similar. These one-star reviews were orchestrated via FB and other social media; it’s pretty easy to see it happening, and the massive numbers of negative reviews appeared minutes after Aftermath was officially released. Wendig notes: 

I also started receiving TONS of harassment – harassment that has gone on for years, harassment that has required me to contact local police and warn them of SWATting attempts, harassment across all corners of the Internet, here, FB, Reddit, YouTube.

This includes all sorts of abuse, but some of the YouTube videos are way over the top. But Aftermath and two subsequent books by Wendig performed very well. But the official reason for his firing:

Today I got the call. I’m fired. Because of the negativity and vulgarity that my tweets bring. Seriously, that’s what Mark, the editor said. It was too much politics, too much vulgarity, too much negativity on my part.

Basically, because I was not civil.

Disney/Marvel/LFL had been aware of Wendig’s social media presence and welcomed it, and certainly benefited from it. His presence online has always been blunt, and profane. The takeaway here is that they caved in to the worst elements of fandom. They did not have their author’s back. They had no problem with him being trolled. Wendig says of his Marvel editor: “He seemed genuinely upset at my tweets and profanity, so maybe that’s accurate.”

Here’s the thing, though: They should have either had a policy in place about social media and advised Wendig about it first, or never hired him. Because one of the reasons Wendig’s books sold was that his name was on the cover. In other words, they chose the trollish fanbase, who aren’t paying to read the books, over the paying fanbase, and their author’s civil rights. As Wendig puts it:

To conclude: this is really quite chilling. And it breaks my heart. I am very sad, and worried for the country I live in, and the world, and for creative people all around. Courage to you all. I have a dire fear this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

P.S. Vote in November like your life depends on it. Because it just might.

Wendig is absolutely right; we need to take back America in order to function as a nation with equal rights.

Is your coworker an assclown or an asshat? Linguists explain the difference The OED is on it, and yes, there is a difference.

‘The streets are haunted’ – Colm Tóibín explores literary Dublin This is a lovely essay about the presence of Irish literary figures in Dublin. And it’s got Cuchulainn!

Education

Free edX online course: How the U.S. Government Works & How to Get Involved From Georgetown University:

This is not your average government class: Our primer offers an overview of the basics, how they apply today, plus the tools you need to make your voice heard.

Food and Drink

Traditionally, the Gimlet is made with Gin. But lately, vodka Gimlets have become very popular. You’ll need to make simple syrup. Use fresh squeezed limes for a much better cocktail.

History and Archaeology

Iran’s Ancient Engineering Marvel The kariz (Farsi) or qanat (Arabic)

Science and Nature

Same-sex penguin couple is madly in love and has adopted an egg

H/T Introversion: A Sand Dollar’s Breakfast Is Totally Metal

Society

Trump Didn’t Win In Spite Of The Access Hollywood Tape. He Won Because Of It.

Even after he won, his supporters were given the benefit of the doubt that they had voted for him in spite of him saying that — that his appeal was so great to them otherwise that they were willing to overlook this transgression. But they didn’t overlook it. They heard it and they liked it. They liked the idea of this rich white man being able to put women in their place. They voted for him because of this. . . . When he said, “And they just let you,” it gave these people a glimmer of hope for a power they felt they once had and have since lost. That’s what “putting someone in their place” means. It means that you have the power “and they just let you.”

Germany protest: Tens of thousands march against far right Only 40,000 had been expected; over 240,000 marched.

Long-Secret Watergate ‘Road Map’ May Soon Be Public. Could It Guide Mueller’s Team?

The Justice Department held that the president could not be indicted, however. Accountability required impeachment, which must begin in Congress — in the House Judiciary Committee — and Jaworski’s office set down a plan for how, legally, to transmit their work to members of Congress.

No one is convinced by the Saudi story of a ‘fistfight’ that went wrong

Technology

Oh Look, The FCC Is Lying Again In Its Latest Court Filings On Net Neutrality See Also: Washington State Laughs At Federal Attack On State Net Neutrality Laws

Cherokee Official Says Trump-Warren DNA Debate Isn’t Helping Tribe

Decades Later, ‘Spy’ Magazine Founders Continue To Torment Trump

30 years ago, Spy magazine sent “refund” checks for $1.11 to 58 rich people. The 26 who cashed those got a another check, for $.64. The 13 who cashed those each got a check for $.13. Two people cashed the $.13 checks—Donald Trump and Jamal Khashoggi’s arms-dealer uncle Annan. @KBAndersen

South Carolina Is Lobbying To Allow Discrimination Against Jewish Parents

Women’s Work

A $21,634 bill? How a homeless woman fought her way out of tow-company hell

Nicola Sturgeon quits BBC event over Steve Bannon invitation

Nicola Sturgeon has pulled out of a conference being jointly hosted by the BBC next month after learning that Donald Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon had been invited to take part.
Scotland’s first minister said that allowing Bannon to freely express his opinions risked “legitimising or normalising far-right, racist views”.

Shirkers: a movie mystery 25 years in the making “In 1992, young-film-maker Sandi Tan’s debut feature was stolen by its director. Here, she tells the story of its surprise rediscovery and how it inspired her new documentary.”

Pay It Forward and Make It Better

The philosophy of Pay It Forward is that through acts of kindness among strangers, we all foster a more caring society. In the book, Reuben St. Clair, a social studies teacher in Atascadero, California, challenges his students to “Change the world”. That’s something we would all like to do, right? What if we could change the world, even in some small way? One of the students in the class is Trevor, who takes the challenge to heart. As he goes about his day, he wonders what he could do, just a twelve year old student, to change the world. He starts by showing kindness to a stranger, and from there, moves on to the next person he can help.  The Pay It Forward Foundation