Today’s otter does not want to share and is courtesy of George Takei on FB. Copyright says parus-mur although a google search doesn’t turn up anything.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a great book? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: arts & entertainment, Culture
100 books by women in 2016 
Otterday! And Open Thread 
Hoyden About Town 
I do love that otter!
Been rigorous about my daily dose of sunshine to combat the SAD lately – feeling the benefits. It’s raining right now though, might have to miss out tomorrow. Hmmmph.
Started House of Cards DVD today. Hooked already. Kevin Spacey is wonderful.
Had a beautiful sunny weekend, but tomorrow might be rainy. They are promising 19 degrees by the end of the week. That Spring is coming feeling is starting although it is often chilly well into September and we have had snow in October before. But if it is hot we all start to worry about the fire season to come. Never happy 😛
I have damp washing draped everywhere because the long range forecast keeps getting updated with worse weather. We’ve taken the kids on some old fashioned rambles through the local national park, which has been cold and muddy, but good to get out and moving. I was so sedentary last week that I had an old lady noise on getting up and struggled to balance while putting on socks. Now everyone’s shoes are saturated (and alongside all my other washing), but I can put on socks. I’m calling it a big win. Bring on spring!
Deep in the process of creating the job I want, since the only thing I seem to be worse at than finding a job in my field is trying to give up working in my field. One facet of this is going to be setting up a Festival for next year, providing an umbrella for organisations of any kind (theatre companies, schools, libraries, am-dram socs, book groups, historic societies, and so forth) to hold commemorative events around the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. After I’ve had an information meeting with Council this week about applying for grants I’ll put up a post looking for your ideas. In the meantime, may I vent my frustration about tertiary administrations that don’t grasp when they’re being handed a gold-plated asset.
Your festival sounds amazing Orlando. I’m sorry that tertiary administrations don’t grasp when they’re being handed a gold-plated asset. 😦
I hope that someone gives you a permanent well paid job creating Shakespeare festivals.
Thank you for saying exactly the right thing, Mindy. So I’m thinking, no time like the present for getting started.
So it looks like the Sad Puppies failed? #hugoawards
Failed hard and completely, Mindy.
And Galactic Suburbia won best fancast! Aussie Aussie Aussie!
Yay for Tansy et al!
I’m reading various responses from non-Puppies to the awards.
The Bloggess: asks readers for their best enjoyed SF recommendations, with bonus cookies for authors she doesn’t already read.
Chuck Wendig’s Obligatory Hugo Awards Recap Post
Tobias Bucknell: What the alternate nominations would likely have been without the bloc/slate votes
Aya de Leon: The Hugo Awards, Social Justice, and the Psychoanalytics of Genre
The liveblog and discussion thread at File 770 about the final Sasquan business meeting, where several motions to change the Hugo nomination process to at least partly counteract slate voting were on the agenda, has also been very illuminating (hundreds of comments btw).
In a nutshell:
A commentor at File 770 has made a start on listing works from slate-bumped writers that are eligible for nomination for next year’s Hugos:
[link]
I want Antony Green to explain E Pluribus Hugo to me!
Speaking of alpha nerds (as Antony Green clearly is!), I thought it was pretty great that Bruce Scheneir was closely involved in the initial discussions that led to E Pluribus Hugo: here and here.
My commute has changed and sadly I don’t have the time to listen to every episode of Galactic Suburbia now, but damn the Tiptree biography episode was good.
Congrats to Tansy, Alisa and Alex!
Oohoohoohoohooh! A pay-what-you-want Women-in-SF book bundle!
https://storybundle.com/scifi
I’ve been reading a fair bit about the Hugos, and thinking that perhaps the focus on race and sex in the peri-Puppy conversation is missing what I think is the real core of it, which is more around a big fuzzy cloud of sexuality and masculinity and a very particular flavour of American conservative Christianity.
We all know about John C Wright’s astonishingly unrepentant gay-hatred. The Puppies’ most favoured insults are homophobic ones, and ones calling men “women”. (Scalzi needs to change his tampon, amirite, ho ho ho!) And while many of them would hesitate to say out loud that they’re against more SF written by women and people of colour being celebrated, they’re perfectly happy to say in public that they’re against poofy glitter SF.
And yes, there are layers. But if you’re talking about it in detail and you’re not talking about sexuality, I think you’re missing something.
Now going out on a limb: I’m not at all convinced David Gerrold would have been the victim of an attempted SWATting if he wasn’t gay.
You definitely have something there, Lauredhel. John C Wright is currently melting down on his blog about an alleged confrontation at Sasquan between Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Wright’s wife (who is also an author published by Tor, where the Nielsen Haydens work as editors), saying that he will no longer write for Tor once his current contracts are completed. In his trademark pompously prolix style he continually refers to PNH as Mr Hayden, refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of PNH’s inclusion of his wife’s surname into his legal name following their marriage, arguing that a man taking his wife’s name goes against all Western tradition and PNH and TNH should not expect anyone with a respect for all that is right, good and proper blah blah to call them by the name they have chosen for themselves. But since the confrontation also provided him with the information that PNH is a Roman Catholic, Wright is hopeful that one day he will repent and be saved, so he’s smarmily magnanimous about the possibility that PNH may just possibly not suffer torments in hell for eternity.
I read that, and his screeching about sodomites and abortion, and his moustache-preening about how he was among the finest writers today….
yeah. no.
Update for those who don’t do FB: I’m unexpectedly attempting to adjust to living in a petless house for the first time in decades. Our elderly pusscat suddenly deteriorated, the vet found a huge growth in her chest cavity that left her struggling to breathe or eat and was starting to affect her heart as well. The day before she’d still been snuggly and meowing loudly for food, jumping up on countertops to demand water from the tap and staring down any other felines that dared to come through her cat flap.
We held her while the vet sent her to sleep. I still can’t believe she’s gone.
So sorry tigtog.
Thank you, Mary. These furry bundles are such important parts of our families, it hurts to suddenly be furless.
We’re not in any rush, but we live in a street full of roaming felines, some friendlier than others. We shall wait and see whether any of them decide to adopt us once they realise Molly won’t be staring them down any more. That somehow seems more appropriate than going out to choose a new cat for ourselves.