May 2013
3 posts
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“Some writers need a while to charge their batteries, and then write their books...”
– Neil Gaiman, from a blog post in 2009 (via wordplaying)
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April 2013
4 posts
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The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry... →
Even though this will be in the news for weeks, we should recognize this for what it is: a rare event. That’s the very definition of news: something that is unusual — in this case, something that almost never happens.
Remember after 9/11 when people predicted we’d see these sorts of attacks every few months? That never happened, and it wasn’t because the TSA...
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“It is Genghis Khan bathed in sherbet ice cream.”
– The Oatmeal: Why the mantis shrimp is my new favorite animal
March 2013
15 posts
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dyrnekeeper:
Resolution: The next time I’m writing fic, if the characters therein spend an afternoon or evening in the library/doing work/reading/writing/attempting productivity of any kind, they will spend at least 75% of that time dicking around on the internet/battling recalcitrant muses/staring out the window/cursing the cursor on a blank page.
“The Recalcitrant Muses”: my new...
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Entire library journal editorial board resigns,... →
In a dramatic show of support for the open access movement, the editor-in-chief and entire editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration announced their resignation last week. In a letter to contributors, the board singled out a conflict with owners over the journal’s licensing terms, which stripped authors of almost all claim to ownership of their work.
In a blog post after the...
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Ta-Nehisi Coates: Departures, Cont. →
The people I grew up around never looked at the color of my skin and thought “You’re not good enough.” If anything they looked at me and thought “Why aren’t you better?”
This sense of rejection powers most of my New York friends. They come to the city fleeing home, looking for some place that will accept them in all their weird ways. I don’t know how...
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Now when Bobby Shaftoe had gone through high school, he’d been slotted into a vocational track and ended up taking a lot of shop classes. A certain amount of his time was therefore, naturally, devoted to sawing large pieces of wood or metal into smaller pieces. Numerous saws were available in the shop for that purpose, some better than others. A sawing job that would be just ridiculously hard and...
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Ron is racist - and that's great →
Ron Weasley’s character is consciously written as somewhat racist. Not as racist as Malfoy, of course - he doesn’t scoff at mudbloods and halfbloods, and he doesn’t see himself as superior at all. Still, he unquestionably accepts the inferior position of house elves (they love serving), when he finds out that Lupin’s werewolf his reaction is not only scared but also disgusted (Don’t touch me!)...
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Fic: Letter to a G.I. (6/6 - Complete!)
dyrnekeeper:
Cast opposite the successful actor and performer Blaine Anderson as a romantic lead in a historic drama Kurt, a relative newcomer to the screen, has to learn to navigate his relationship with his character – and with his co-star.
NC-17, 7,300 words this part (60,000 overall.)
Warning for death as a thematic literary element, if that’s a thing? See here for more.
Earlier...
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Oh, by the way, Whose Line is coming back. More details later.— Colin Mochrie (@colinmochrie) March 1, 2013
Sometimes, good things happen in the world.
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February 2013
41 posts
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Fic: Letter to a G.I. (5/6) →
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Dozens of big U.S. companies to back gay marriage →
dyrnekeeper:
FORTUNE — On Thursday, dozens of American corporations, including Apple, Alcoa, Facebook, eBay, Intel, and Morgan Stanley will submit an amicus brief in the landmark Hollingsworth v. Perry case broadly arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that laws banning same-sex marriages, like California’s ballot initiative Proposition 8, are unconstitutional under the Due Process and Equal...
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“We, who are as good as you, swear to you, who are no better than us, to accept...”
– Barcelona was governed in the Middle Ages by an oligarchy of nobles, merchants, shopkeepers and, unusually, artisans who formed into the Consell de Cent, or Council of One Hundred, in the 13th century. The city’s charter of citizens’ rights, the Usatges, or Usages, predates the Magna Carta by a...
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Fic: Letter to a G.I. (4/6) →
Here are the first Instagram photos posted from... →
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Counting down. All functions nominal. All functions optimal. Counting down. The center holds. The falcon hears the falconer. Infrastructure, check. Wetware, check. Everyone hang on to the lap bar, please.
Apotheosis was the beginning before the beginning. Devices on alert. Observe the procedures of a general alert. The base and the pinnacle. The flower inside the fruit that is both its parent...
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“I think that the BBC’s attitude toward the show while it was in production was...”
– Douglas Adams, on the original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series.
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Fic: Letter to a G.I. (3b/6) →
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“Give me silence, water, hope.
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.”
– From the Heights of Maccho Picchu by Pablo Neruda, 1945.
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This sentence has five words. →
sweethesound:
This sentence has five words.
Here are five more words.
Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety.
Now listen.
I vary the sentence length, and I create music.
Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a...
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Fic: Letter to a G.I. (Part 3a/6) →
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wondermumbles:
“Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable...
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An analysis of how frequently words and characters... →
