I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Linkee-poo was just a dreamer, you were just a dream

Oh fuck. Jay Lake's cancer screening came back with bad news.

Sam Miller with every brilliant piece of writing advice from Clarion 2012. (Grokked from Tobias Buckell)

What's your particular dream of being a writer. I think most of us would be lying if we said we didn't do the same exact thing. (Grokked from Mer Haskell)

A slush reader for Apex shares the process. (Grokked from Absolute Write)

An interview with Evan Gregory of the Ethan Ellenberg Literary agency. (Grokked from John Scalzi)

Rose Fox debunks the myth of "never working in this town again." When you're young and nubile (for various values of "young" and "nubile") you often worry about such things. The publishing industry is a big sea and even big fish can't cover the entire span. She also points to the Jeff VanderMeer post on the same subject.

And essay by Emily Rapp about grief and the stories we tell ourselves. Sometimes those stories, and the public perception that we need to follow their examples, are the cruelest prisons. They are what our fairy tales became, instructional manuals on how to behave in public. When a person loses someone close to them, when we see them being stoic we thinks "that's correct" and "good for them." It fits our stories. When that person looks like the broken life they're living, shows and tells us of the grief that swells in their eviscerated life, cries and wails as they attempt to deal with their lose we think that's wrong when actually it's a truer experience than the stiff upper lip. "It will be, as the Buddhists say, what it is."

How a person uses the internet can predict depression. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)

The Window's Surface tablet is rumored to be sold for $199 which would be below costs. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the OS/Browser Wars, Part 2. (Pointed to by John)

A Peruvian burial site with intact graves. One of the more interesting finds is a tomb surrounded by dozens of newborn child skeletons, all positioned as if looking into the tomb. Also noted, some people were buried under newborn skeletons. Piles of them. (Grokked from Matt Staggs)

When is a cross not a cross? When it's used as a message of hate. All the Middle Tennessee Baptist Church needs to do is light those babies on fire to complete their transformation to the dark side. Actually, in the back of my head, Firesign Theater's Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him keeps running through my head. "Do you recognize what I'm holding over your heads, lads?", "It's a cross, symbol of the quartering of the universe into active and passive principles." … "What the father means is what is the cross made of. Gold. Do you have any?"

Fred Clark has too many good links he calls "scenes from the class war." Including notables such as the shining mansions on the hill about the implied hard work=success false scripture so often foisted on the masses. The zombie like return of social Dawrinism thanks to the incredibly small heartedness of some of our conservatives. It's almost enough for me to pray that these people find humility before it comes up and kicks them in the ass. Almost. More evidence that "since last summer in Florida that the dogwhistles are now air-raid sirens, and that the Republicans are no longer even trying hard to camouflage what they're actually saying." This race is quickly shaping up not to be about the ideas, but a struggle for the conscience of the nation. Think I'm being dramatic? It so bad we now have headlines that read "Hot New Study Shows That Treating the Sick Saves Lives". This just in, the sun rose in the East this morning as the world revolved in that direction. And I highly recommend the "Mendacity" links at the end of that list. This is beyond "politics twisting the truth". One side of the argument no longer cares if they're even in shouting distance of the truth.

"But let us look at this man, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. A liberal should love him, for he is a triumph of the liberal state." And as so often in that case, his anger and being in that position drives him to destroy the very things that helped him. It's either that or he is so out of touch with his life that he truly doesn't understand how government works, and how he personally has benefited from that (both of which seem to be the peculiar blind spot of conservatives these days).

Sure glad Arizona isn't having any problems decreeing who is and isn't a citizen. Because, you know, jailing someone just because they're brown isn't bad enough, now we add, "and they had a silly name" to the list. But it's refreshing to see it isn't just President Obama whom Arizonian law enforcement thinks have forged their own birth certificate. (Grokked from the Slactivist)

How to talk to people in wheelchairs. You know, talk to them like they're a human being. (Grokked from the Slactivist)

Alligator Quotient: There was the snap I was waiting for.

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