I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true
My friend Deepa, an artist in India, is crowdfunding for SatRangaM, India's biggest queer theatre festival. It's a very grassroots effort with no corporate sponsorship, and it needs more support to break even when they go on stage next week. They need about USD $10,500 total to showcase twelve performances, all written and directed/choreographed by queer artists, plus workshops & discussions.…
I'm speaking, performing, moderating, and otherwise participating at WisCon 48 (WisCon 2026) this weekend! It's entirely online (Discord + Zoom with some YouTube livestreams). My schedule: Panel: The Last Year in Gender-Exploring SpecFic Saturday, May 23rd, 10:30 AM–11:45 AM CDT Members of the 2025 Otherwise jury and others familiar with the award will discuss the 2025 Otherwise Winner,…
looking forward to the next episode of Pluribus starting to read the scifi mystery Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite making note of the upcoming Grolier Club exhibition on the mechanization of printing: "The Second Printing Revolution: Invention of Mass Media" , starting January 14 thinking about whether I could make some use of the new Rx Inspector tool from Pro Publica spreading word of the…
Happened across this Bluesky post embedding a TikTok of a vid about Al Gore "losing" the 2000 election to George W. Bush, set to a Sabrina Carpenter song. Enjoyed and wanted to share. comments
Over in this MetaFilter thread I've been going on and on about: the books use the medium of prose well, including unreliable narration; how can the TV series adapt that? can it? the bookending of the two big rescues at the start and end of All Systems Red, and how Wells describes people helping each other overcome their automatic patterns etc. I welcome your thoughts! I have spent like 3 hours…
An interesting MetaFilter comment on complicity in Butler's work. .... in various books where people are forced into bad bargains because the other choice is quite literally to die. There are a number of feminist books of the seventies/eighties/nineties where the narrator refuses and it more or less works ( Fifth Sacred Thing , eg) or where the main character refuses and choses basically to die (…
I am on Bluesky and sometimes I go look at denise 's feed there. I remembered that a few years ago she had noticed that Tumblr had a particular job opening, and had speculated about what a person in that role might want to do with the platform. https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3libfgunrhc2q https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3libfqau4rk2q I had not realized that she…
Belatedly realized I'd already made a front-page post to MetaFilter recommending a short story that I already recommended to you but without much fanfare! So I'll post here what I was gonna say there: "Subject: 'Became a zombie' Life Event" From 2013: "Feature Development for Social Networking" by Benjamin Rosenbaum , an epistolary zombie story set at a tech platform, exploring "how fantastical…
Am trying out this way of thinking: If I were the tallest person in a group, I'd be the one who helps grab things off high shelves. And that would be fine, as long as it's not All The Time, and other people don't just take me for granted. And probably there would be other things that other people are particularly good at, better than the rest of us, and the little favors we do would all balance…
My spouse and I are watching season 6 of The Dragon Prince right now and I find it likely my frequent complaints are reducing his enjoyment so I will instead summarize them here (we just watched episode 2) Nearly none of these people are managing communication or projects or security appropriately including those who are not actual children recently my partner pointed out that Soren was the person…
I could use some tips on how to be a better event host when some participants are acting unusually anxious. Sometimes, when I am hosting an event, there are new participants who demonstrate a level of anxiousness above and beyond standard jitters. Like, it's very common for a first-timer to not initiate conversation and to not move around physically to mingle, to double-check whether it's OK to…
If you live someplace where there is a regular place a lot of people go on weekends, like a farmer's market or a popular park, maybe there is something of a fringe or liminal area where sometimes people set up folding tables and sell stuff or campaign. Girl Scout cookies, petition signings, and so on. If you are in the US and you want to meet likeminded neighbors because of the recent election…
My friend Jacob is offering: Free digital security checkups for people/organizations concerned about the incoming US government Anyone is eligible for this - whatever your concern. Whatever form any sort of resistance takes, it’s going to need to rest on a foundation of security and private communication. I’ve spent nearly twenty years working in the security industry, including actual…
(A) Stand-up to Protect Our Vote: standupstandup.tech I'm running a fundraiser for the Election Protection Hotline, 1-866-OUR-VOTE . No matter your position on the 2024 US election, I'm guessing you want the votes counted fairly . So I'm trying to raise USD $25,000 for Election Protection. Not a US resident or US citizen? Hate all the major parties? No problem! You'd be donating to The…
I thought this when I first watched it, and I still think this: it is fascinating to imagine a US resident from, say, January 2011 watching the Celebrating America special from January 20, 2021 and trying to work out what had happened in the intervening ten years. Why is Tom Hanks speaking with steely resolve? Why is he reassuring me that the nation's capital has been secured? Why are there no…
Kamala Harris's campaign sent out a press release saying, among other things, After watching Fox News this morning we only have one question, is Donald Trump ok? Main takeaways Trump gave to the American people: .... Trump is old and quite weird? This guy shouldn’t be president ever again That phrasing, with the question mark, is (per Gretchen McCulloch , internet linguistics expert), reads…
Caught COVID for the 1st time Am slowly recovering. Am likely not fully catching up on reading page. comments
The 1980s action movie Streets of Fire is, in the US, up on YouTube in its entirety to watch free-with-ads right now. Saw it last night. A few thoughts: It's infernokrusher. It's pretty. It kind of reminds us of Dark City , Batman: The Animated Series , and Brazil in how it synthesizes a stylized 20th century urban aesthetic that sort of is unmoored in time. And it's a MOVIE, visual and sonic…
I'm watching "Making The Cut" (the Project Runway-like show that is on Amazon Video). Tim Gunn talking about runway shows in the Amazon fashion studio reminds me of him in an early Project Runway season reminding contestants to use items from the Boo.com Accessory Wall. comments
“queer not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” -bell hooks (via Dr. Damien P. Williams on Bluesky ; I have not checked the cited source, which is a video of a live conversation ) in…
I've gotten into Taskmaster (UK) recently, subsequent to previous fannish dives into the Dropout game show Game Changer , Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal , and The Colbert Report . I am extremely open to talking with y'all in a fan meta fashion about The different Dominance/submission approaches within Game Changer and Taskmaster , and in particular, how they delicately balance how much/whether to…
From Emily McCombs in a Slate advice column last year: In recovery circles, I’ve heard this described as “going to the hardware store for oranges.” In this case, the hardware store is your parents and the oranges are the love and support you rightfully wish they could give you. Unfortunately, the hardware store simply doesn’t stock oranges. And we save ourselves a world of…
I'm writing a blog post over at my name blog about how open source maintainers can think about trusting new co-maintainers, what that trust entails, how to check for trustworthiness, etc. I was writing this bit, and then a friend reminded me that including something about sex in this piece would mean that she could not share it in her starchy workplace. So I'm saving it here instead, and will…
My mother died this year, after a long decline in her health, and I was one of the main people who helped take care of her. ( Here’s her obituary. ) While caring for her, preparing for her death, and handling logistics afterwards, I learned a lot from online resources, various professionals, and friends. So I'm trying to pass on some things I learned by sharing them in a new blog post:…
Haven't been keeping up on my Dreamwidth or Fediverse/Mastodon feeds since early October. Hope folks will email or comment here if they social media posted something they really would prefer that I know. comments