Ageism in SF/F. (Grokked from Cat Rambo)
So, what would a Russian Avengers look like? Well, glad you asked. What is "please don't suck" in Russian? (Grokked from Dan)
Remember when people were worried about CERN creating blackholes? We'll here's a guy creating "sonic" blackholes in a lab (video link) And has been doing it since 2009. There's a blue laser, but no Red Matter to be seen.
What's wrong with social bullying in schools? St Louis schools add free clothes washers to their schools, see increase in attendance because kids/families can finally reliably wash their clothes. "The results support research demonstrating that chronic absenteeism isn’t because of kids’ lack of smarts or motivation, but is largely due to coming from a low-income household." (Grokked from Kameron Hurley)
Interactive dynamic video. Okay then. (Grokked from Dan)
The rural villages of Japan are feeling Japan's population loss most acutely. In one village, a daughter who returned to help her parents pass is now making scarecrows as a way to honor her village. Did I ever link to the person who was making cutout people here in the US and doing the same thing (posing them like real people)?
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/hillary-clinton-presidency-gop-plan-227427 The conservatives are already gearing up to continue the gridlock of the last 6 years in the event that Hillary gets elected. So, same as it ever was. (Grokked from Robert J Bennett)
So why is the Trumpster running? "'He opens up the paper each morning and sees our nation’s leaders giving a hundred billion dollars to Iran, or he opens the paper and some new school district has just eliminated the ability for its students to say the pledge of allegiance, or some fire department in some town is ordered by the mayor to no longer fly the American flag on the back of a fire truck,' Eric Trump told The Stream's James Robinson. 'Or, he sees the tree on the White House lawn has been renamed 'Holiday tree' instead of 'Christmas tree.' I could go on and on for hours. Those are the very things that made my father run, and those are the very things he cares about.'" And none of it happened. We are not "giving" money to Iran, we are returning their money that we had frozen since 1979 (and in some cases we must pay interest, according to the law). Some school districts are allowing kids to "opt-out" of saying the pledge (and some never required kids to say the pledge). And it wasn't the mayor, it was the leadership of the fire department, the flags were added without permission, and the flags are a safety violation (also, it was only the large flag flapping on the back on the truck, not the flag stickers already on the truck). Oh, and do we really need to disprove the "Holiday Tree" thing one more time? Seriously, what fucking world do these people live in? Damn, his echo chamber is nearly hermetically sealed.
3 comments:
Re Ageism in SFF, I was once super-excited to read a story because the protagonist was an elderly lady.
I ended up disliking the story, and wondered if it did more harm than good, or if I had just raised my hopes too high. I mean, lots of aged male wizards, but outside of Harry Potter, middle aged and older women? Guy Gavriel Kay has written some, and Terry Pratchett of course, and... well... I'm staring at my bookshelves and coming up empty.
I think the article was more about a young turks kinda thing, but I think it leads to what you're talking about (and something I've thought a lot about). While there's lots of discussion about inclusion surrounding POC, and "writing the other", there is very little discussion about being inclusive of generational divides and writing older people convincingly. Most younger people don't understand that your focus changes as you get older, what is important to you at 20 is not the same as at 50. And that's not to mention the challenges of aging.
Yeah, I didn't really make the cause and effect I was seeing clear. :)
But I don't really get why it's thought that people aren't interested in reading about those different from them. I mean, my favorite two characters when I was a kid were Bilbo Baggins and Miss Marple.
It's not like being either an elderly British lady or a hobbit is anything with which I had real-life experience.
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