Inkwell left me a present...

Apparently, I haven't been paying close enough attention to him, as he managed to throw up in the front window sill without me noticing. I'm not sure how long ago it happened, as I don't open the front window unless I absolutely have to. In addition, I'd built up a "cat castle" in front of the window, making it a safe space for him to get away from humans.

Well, he took advantage of it.

I just spent the last half hour scrubbing the area and vacuuming up the remaining chunks. It looks to me like it was a dinner, so it probably happened in the middle of the night sometime. It was dried enough that cleaning it wasn't too bad, it just required some scrubbing.

I have been in a major depression with some anxiety attacks for the past few months. It's been bad enough that I've been trying to stay inside and away from people. I'm going to have to break out of it soon. It's not a comfortable way to live. As a meme on Facebook said, "Depression is when you don't really care about anything. Anxiety is when you care too much about everything. And having both is just like hell."

In lieu of forcing myself to be creative, here's a summary of some of my recent Facebook posts - stuff that I found interesting enough to share.

Andy Borowitz again hits one out of the park with Nation with Crumbling Bridges and Roads Excited to Build Giant Wall. Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. We need leadership that will rebuild our infrastructure, not make stupid promises about walls on our borders.

U.S. Doctors Call for Universal Health Care. A single-payer system is the only moral system. Companies that profit from denying care, which includes most health insurance companies and many pharmaceutical companies, are basically evil. If the goal is increasing shareholder profits and not saving lives, then the companies should go away. Forever.

CharityWatch ranks lots of charities, including The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Foundation. Note the extremely low overhead of the Clinton Foundation, at only 12%. The charity gets an "A" rating because most of its money goes to help people. The numbers being used by conservative critics are not false... they simply count everything that isn't a grant as overhead. Since the Clinton Foundation assists people using other methods besides grants, the critics' numbers are misleading and basically a giant lie.

When we lived in Frankenhaus, one of the biggest problems we ran into was keeping the blackberries under control. Well, we have Luther Burbank to blame. I've spent many days at Luther Burbank Park, so I was a little surprised to read the history of the man. Kind of strikingly eye-opening, and not in a good way.

I quite liked this tweet:

So Sarkozy calls the burkini a 'provocation.' Whether women cover or uncover their bodies, seems we're always, always 'asking for it.'

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 25, 2016

In case you don't know the backstory, several seaside towns in France banned the "burkini", a full body covering suit that allows Muslim or similarly shy women to go to the beach without exposing themselves. At one beach, a woman wearing one was forced to strip by police. That's right. Police forced a woman being modest at the beach to strip. The French Supreme Court banned the laws, but they are apparently still being enforced and a disturbing percent of the population is just fine with it. On the one hand, I'm kind of relieved that another country is outdoing America for sheer stupidity, but on the other hand, really, France? Really?

Women can't win.

New DeLoreans are being built with original parts. These will reportedly have a much better engine. I'm just going to take the opportunity to note that I got to ride in a DeLorean on Back to the Future Day, something that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

On a very light note, the entire British Olympics team had an unfortunate airport problem. Oops.

I don't know if you'll be able to see this if you don't have Facebook, sorry, but Dee Snider did an acoustic version of "We're Not Gonna Take It" that is just amazing and done for all the right reasons. I'm going to try to embed the YouTube version:


Moving on, Phil Plait got really excited about a new astronomical discovery. What does it mean, practically? Not a lot for the average person, but it expands and changes our knowledge and potential understanding of the universe.

A teenager in Montreal showed himself to be a true man by calmly saving a woman from a kidnapper. If that story doesn't bring happiness to your heart, you're probably dead.

A post by a Fort Worth mother of a note from her child's teacher has gone viral. Basically, the teacher was informing parents that the children would not be assigned any homework - only work they didn't finish in class - and urged parents to do evening activities with their children that are proven to correlate with student success. Activities like reading together, eating as a family, playing outside and getting to bed on time. My response is positive. I didn't do homework. I always asked myself if I could pass it if it were on a test. If the answer was yes, I ignored any homework assignments. If the answer was no, I went to the teacher to get it fully explained to me so I could pass it on a test. Homework never figured into my understanding. It was all just busy work. Pointless and useless. If I understood it, why would I want to waste time and energy doing another 50 problems? If I didn't understand it, I couldn't see how struggling through 50 problems would help me in any way.

If you haven't read the Hugo-winning Short Story "Cat Pictures Please", go check it out now. It makes me want to take photos of Inkwell and post them. If only I weren't so upset at him at the moment for his present he left in the windowsill...

Keep Looking Up! (Jun 27th through Jul 3rd)

Keep Looking Up! (Jun 20th through 26th)

Keep Looking Up! (Jun 13th through 19th)

Keep Looking Up! (Jun 6th through 12th)

Keep Looking Up! (May 30th through Jun 5th)

Keep Looking Up! (May 23rd through 29th)

Keep Looking Up! (May 16th through 22nd)

Yes, yet more links!

I'm feeling the need for some more links! Let's start with a bit of personal news...

I took the leap today and submitted an application to The DC Writers Workshop, even though I do not believe I quite fit the profile of what they are looking for. I have no published fiction, yet, so my writing samples were news articles. That alone may disqualify me. However, the experience of forcing myself to fill out that application, instead of a boring job application, felt good. And hey, there's a chance they might invite me to the video workshop, which could lead to new writing skills. That's nothing to sneeze at.

In some other happy news, Variety and DC Comics have confirmed the return of Supergirl for a second season. It will be moving networks and filming will likely move to Vancouver, which could mean cast changes. I hope not, since the cast is the strong point of the entire show.

I wish I could afford a catio for Inkwell. And for me. Inkwell really wants to go outside, but is terrified of it. And I don't want to lose him to a car or coyote. Via King5.

I'd like to hang out with these women, but I don't work in comics at the moment.

Enjoy a video at Boing Boing of skipping sodium into a river. Lovely explosions!

There's a very interesting discussion at MetaFilter about the cost to taxpayers of businesses like WalMart that fail to provide adequate security and end up calling the police four times as much as comparable retail stores. This is a form of hidden taxes and corporate welfare, like how many WalMart employees qualify for food stamps. If WalMart were a responsible corporation, it would take care of its employees and not rely so heavily on local police to handle its security. But read the comments... lots of good views and other examples there.

A bunch of white morons got upset when a group of 16 black female West Point cadets raised their fists in one of many photos during a photo shoot to celebrate making it through the academy. The photo pose was determined to be "inappropriate" by an official inquiry because the raised fist (commonly used to indicate "Army strong!" during football games) could also be taken as a political statement. Personally, I think it's a great photo and the lily-livered idiots who got upset are clearly trying to make up for their own deficiencies.

Speaking of deficiencies... definitely not safe for work: Why ancient statues had small penises.

The Zipper Merge is the only way to drive, but for some reason, it's considered rude by people who don't know how to drive. The Minnesota DOT is trying to teach people how to use it, even including a video of why it works and a video of how to do it. These links are from MetaFilter, which has quite a long and heated discussion on the issue. Personally, I'm for proper zipper merging, but since the majority of Washington state is not, it's too dangerous to do it. People will literally try to kill you if you follow the law and use the open lane until the merge.

Inkwell believes this website is the most annoying thing online.

I really hope this archive is being digitized and preserved for posterity, because it sounds like it might be invaluable when looking at history.

Linkages for Tuesday

No, a kid did NOT find an ancient Mayan city by comparing ruin locations to the stars.

Weapons of Math Instruction?

Ursula K. Le Guin writes about her cat.

Huh. Wizards of the Coast has some tournament judges suing them, claiming they were effectively employees and should have been compensated as such.

The Chronicles of Cisco continues for fans of The Flash tv show: Part One (in which Cisco tries to improve the Flash suit and falls asleep), Part Two (in which Cisco tries to find an intruder at 3:45 a.m.), Part Three (in which Cisco makes a mistake), and Part Four (in which we learn... well, watch and see).

Boing Boing has a list of disappearances that still make people scratch their heads. Some fascinating stories there.

More fascinating stories came out of Remote Year, a social experiment that didn't turn out perfect, but certainly makes for good reading.

Here's a brutal Fortean topic: The terror of albinism in parts of Africa. In short, if you are albino, you do not exist and are constantly at risk of death.

This piece from Popehat has to be read to be believed. This guy seriously wanted an amendment declaring only people descended from white Europeans to be allowed to be citizens? Now the guy is a Trump delegate... what a surprise.

Hugo Corner:

• Boing Boing on Chuck Tingle's epic troll of the rabid puppies.
• GRRM on other awards.
• Bujold on her Locus nomination.
• A review of one of the works I don't plan to bother reading, because it's from the rabid puppies' master's publishing house (It sounds about as worthless as I suspected it would, building strawmen based on scant facts). The reviewer then responds to the morons who support the original piece.
• And lastly, a painful piece on the current status of the comic book industry, which also mentions the Hugo mess.

And now, a four-minute video that will make you cry. Maybe.

The Present from Jacob Frey on Vimeo.

Keep Looking Up! (May 9th through 15th)

Thursday afternoon Linkdump

Well, crud. A frozen vegetable recall due to possible listeria contamination has expanded and now includes all the veggies we get from Costco, including one bag that's half eaten. Ug.

Syrian refugees in Canada have very little, but what little they have they are giving to help people affected by the massive wildfires. Via MeFi.

One thing I hated about importing some of my music into Amazon's music app is that, if it thought it knew what song it was, it would replace my music with a "higher quality" version. Because computer algorithms are imperfect, I would sometimes either get a different version of the song or, in one case, a completely different song. An example would be a live duet version of a song replaced by the more popular single singer version that I didn't like as much. Well, at least Amazon didn't delete my original songs. Apparently, Apple Music deletes original song files when you import them into it. Yikes. That's some serious damage to many people's music collections.

Supergirl is in danger of not being renewed, mostly due to the cost to make the show. I really enjoyed the first season, despite some clunky writing and plots. The cast is terrific and I want to see more of it.

How about some ghost stories? Here's a tale of ghosts on a plane. I'm not sure whether to believe the tales or not, but they are fascinating. I'm moderately sure I would freak out if I experienced something like this, seeing as I already have massive anxiety attacks on planes. The last time I flew, from San Diego to Seattle, I needed some serious help to stay calm. I'm not entirely sure I could force myself onto a plane again if there is any other option for getting to where I'm going.

Another interesting story I read today is about two women who just wanted to live without men in a time when women weren't really allowed to do that. But they managed their happily ever after despite the forces around them (and despite being a bit silly with finances).

Trying to trick drivers with an optical illusion might work for a bit, but it generally wears off once drivers figure out what they are.

A woman paints an octopus using 95 million-year-old octopus ink (Google Translate version). Original article in Norwegian. Via MeFi

This story doesn't comfort me regarding medical procedures in our high-tech world. I'm just wondering why the software was set up to do a scan at that point in time.

Every single authority figure failed this child who lost out on her lunch and was accused of a crime for trying to spend a legal $2 bill. The fact that the cop had to go to a bank to figure out it was real shows such ignorance I can hardly stand it. My former boss at Math 'n' Stuff used to get $2 bills on purpose from the bank to hand out as change. I swear I'm going to start getting them myself and spending them everywhere to raise awareness that they exist and are legal tender.

Augie reports that some Marx Brother Movies have been restored, including cut footage. I think I wouldn't mind seeing one of these all cleaned up... movie night!

If I had more money, I'd definitely be supporting a bunch of people on Patreon. One I'd support is Otis Frampton, creator of Oddly Normal. Unfortunately, I'm worse-than-poor at the moment (cash flow is good right now, but soon to be a right mess). So the best I can do is pass this along and hope someone else supports him until Eric and I get our feet back under us.

People who are thinking about trying to break into writing for comics could do worse than looking into this DC Writers Workshop. I am considering applying, although I suspect I a) do not qualify and b) wouldn't be able to afford the trip if I got accepted. Folks have until the end of the month to enter.

Linkdump for Wednesday

Canada is burning. Well, one town. But it's a scary type of burning.

Honestly? I'm really wishing lab-grown meat would happen more quickly. I would be delighted to switch to food grown this way. It would save water, save land, not hurt animals and still satisfy our carnivore side... if it all pans out. I hope it does.

Metafilter has a frightening story: one person moving out of New Jersey put the state's budget at risk. In other words, the super-rich are so rich that they can devastate a region just by leaving. I don't mind people getting rich, but this is obscene.

On a lighter note, Metafilter finds a jewelry ad to be The Greatest & Most Enigmatic 2-Minute Horror Suspense Film of Our Time. It's... wow. I think it is truly impressive that an ad featuring Gwyneth Paltrow could have so many continuity errors that it inspires crazy theories.

Having recently read a book on the history of Hawaii (I really should review it), this article makes perfect sense in a pathetic way. Yes, people really were that racist and greedy.

Students are now exempt from stringent FAA standards regarding flying drones. I still want a little drone to use inside the house.

Comic book writer Peter David writes about his weight loss battle.

And in other comics, Previews seems to indicate that Rebirth is a reboot after all. I guess I don't mind having my comics rebooted every 20 years, but every five years or so is getting tiresome.

Some links and a rant

NASA is trying to grow potatoes on Mars. According to a Wall Street Journal article, scientists are trying to find a potato that will grow at cold and low-pressure conditions, and is also good for food. Of course, they can't grow in the open air on Mars:

the temperature averages minus 84 degrees Fahrenheit, with lows of minus 284 degrees, according to NASA. It has high levels of radiation and over 60% less gravity than Earth. Its atmosphere has 96% carbon dioxide, with only a tiny amount of oxygen. Then there are the dust storms and salty water.

Still, to test the soil conditions, scientists are planting crops in soil from the Pampas de La Joya Desert in southern Peru. If the tests are successful, then a simulator will be made that mimics the conditions the plants would endure in a dome on Mars.

When I first read this headline: Wolverines Are Now Being Trained to Find Avalanche Survivors, I thought it was some sort of Marvel Comics promotion. D'oh. No, it's an actual effort to use wolverines, the actual animals, to hunt for people in avalanches. Wolverines are small, smart, and work well in the snow. The trick is getting the wolverines to imprint on humans soon after birth, as well as breeding them in captivity.

My friend Michael Sensei went spelunking and took some photos and video of Yugen Cave. Makes me want to head up to Bellingham and visit that cave I went to with friends once.

Children have been doodling all throughout time. I love these scraps of art by a 7-year-old boy named Onfim living in 13th century Novgorod, Russia.

Optical illusions are not universal, which was a surprise to me. There's a couple of examples of how people perceive illusions differently in the article. Be sure to read the comments, lots of insight and some corrections there.

This documentary sounds fantastic. I wish I lived near enough to an IMAX theater to go see it.

George R. R. Martin has an epic response to a writer who thinks, for some bizarre reason, that because Martin once purchased a story from him that Martin must therefore love everything that writer has ever written. The reasoning is so twisted and wrong it hardly bears giving any thought to, but Martin calmly and completely demolishes it and the writer (who, incidentally called Martin a liar, to boot). Nicely done, Martin.

Spacefaring, Extradimensional Happy Kittens has a round-up of people's responses to being included on this year's rabid puppies slate. Many asked to be removed and were not. Some support the rabids. Because this year the rabids included "human shields" in their slate, the overall situation is much more complicated than last year, in which a near-total rejection of the slate was reasonable, as very few of the nominations were Hugo-worthy. This year the rabids included works that would certainly have made it to the final ballot... but other good works were still kicked off. Voters are going to have to decide if it's more important to them to punish the slate or more important that a good work get the Hugo. It will not be an easy choice.

One last Hugo rant after the fold. Feel free to skip it.

Keep Looking Up! (May 2nd through 8th)

Here I Go A-Gathering Links...

My friend Lou Anders has had a short story published in Boys Life. I used to steal my brother's Boys Life magazines and read all the fiction and cartoons before he even got a chance to glance at them. I still want to read the entire comic adaptation of the Tripods trilogy... I never saw the whole thing.

Ancient footprints are already pretty cool artifacts, but now they are even cooler since professional trackers have been brought in to make sense of them. I love this type of history story... looking at a problem from a different, yet totally obvious, direction.

How about a tale of a very long-running experiment? I've heard of some experiments that have been going for many years, but this is a bit of a surprise. Seeds in bottles, buried in an effort to see how long the seeds would last.

So, Free Comic Book Day is coming. Here's some sneak peeks of Doctor Who comics. I need to figure out what comics we already ordered from DCBS so I know which ones to get when Eric and I go to the store next week.

I stayed up until 2 a.m. reading a book the other night/morning. I haven't done that for ages because I've been too responsible to risk being dead at work, for all the good it did me. But I really enjoyed the book and will be writing about it soon, probably not for tomorrow's reviews, but maybe next Sunday. It was Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon, and I strongly recommend it for any young woman, ages 8-18, who isn't very princess-y or girly and likes snakes and slugs and dirt and work. It's very good.

David Gerrold has a post about Hugo asterisks. I just want to say, the asterisks were there the instant the puppies gamed the Hugos. Putting them into physical form didn't make it any worse, since the damage was already done. On the contrary, the asterisks let some of us have a physical memento of their first time voting in the Hugos (me!) and raised money for a worthy cause. The people who were hurt by the asterisks deserved to be hurt because they are the ones who put the asterisk there in the first place by gaming the Hugo nominations. The fact that they still don't get it only proves the point. And it still amazes me that they are stupid enough to think that people gamed the Hugos before they did. The utter willful ignorance of the puppies is astounding.

Below the fold, depressing stories...

Some Links

Promising new treatment for leukemia. I hope this one pans out, but I do wonder about the patients who didn't have a positive response to it.

Here's a creepy tale of a mysterious body found after the Blitz in Liverpool.

Ancient Engineering So Advanced It Is Like Magic. I'd read about these before, but this Metafilter post brings the links together nicely. Ancient Peruvian wells served as part of an irrigation system to use wind power to drive water where it needed to go. Wow.

Atlas Obscura looks at some folks on American money. There are definitely some interesting individuals whose portraits were on currency!

Check out this way cool tale of Victorians who nearly got themselves killed by flying too high in a balloon. In their defense, they really had no clue what they would face up there.

How about a bit of girl power before I get into depressing topics?

Once again, anti-vaxxers are risking the lives of their children from complications of measles because they think they understand science better after 20 minutes of Googling than people who have been studying it all their lives. Measles was eradicated from the U.S. more than a decade ago, but because of anti-vaxxers, it keeps being brought back. If they knew what vaccines were preventing - if they only knew the pain and suffering of "childhood diseases" - those anti-vaxxers would be ashamed of themselves. But they don't, and the only way they are going to learn is when their own children suffer and die from preventable diseases, which is horrible and unfair to the innocent children. It's a pity the anti-vaxxers, who were vaccinated by their parents, won't be the ones to suffer instead.

And my other pet peeve: a woman is forced out of a hotel's public bathroom by male police officers (youtube link) because she doesn't fit their stereotype of "female" (warning, strong language in the video). She should sue that hotel. I spent half my life being told I looked like a boy because I wore baggy clothing and kept my hair cut short. Having a security guard throw me out of the bathroom while I was waiting in line would have been an absolute nightmare for me. This woman said, in comments on a post of the video, that this happened at the Freemont Hotel Lobby bathroom, "not the casino" (so I'm assuming it's in Las Vegas, maybe?) and that she wasn't expecting to have to show ID to use the restroom. Usually she just assures people she's female and that's enough. In addition, she had friends with her, so no one would be stupid enough to just assume she was male, right? Ha. The security guard with his "papers, please" attitude was disgusting. Her word alone should have been enough, but with several other women vouching for her, the fact that they threw her out is obscene. We aren't Nazi Germany and people are NOT required to carry ID with them everywhere. At least not yet. And, by the way, she looks and sounds female to me.

Linkdump

Maisie Williams crashes a Game of Thrones viewing party.

I do not want to travel on these bridges... Google Earth algorithms result in strange images thanks to texture mapping. These aren't actually glitches, they are the result of how the program looks at data.

I'm not sure I get the science behind using seawater for heating, but I'm happy to see an effort to reduce the use of fossil fuels. More here.

How about a little Flash? The Chronicles of Cisco, Part 1:

An Australian politician sets a river on fire to show that fracking isn't harmless. The only people who don't think fracking is dangerous and damaging are people who are profiting from it, apparently. It's causing massive pollution, seepage of methane, and even earthquakes. But the companies insist it's safe. Huh.

The first responses to Seattle's wage hikes ($12.50 an hour now, going up to $15 an hour by January 2018) are coming in, and prices just haven't changed. It's still far too soon to see the long-term impacts, but so far the prognosis is positive.

Keep Looking Up! (Apr 25th through May 1st)

I'm still trying to remember where I put all my links...

So this isn't going to be much of a linkdump. I'll remember how to do it eventually, I'm sure!

First, today was the first day I left the house since Monday. Eric took me out to lunch and then we hit the local Bi-Mart to check some prices. Yeah, not a huge trip, but enough to get me out and about. I thought Inkwell was relieved to see me finally go, but when we got back he was sleeping under my chair. Hrm.

I also chatted with my sister a bit. Since I am no longer constrained by my job, it might be possible for me to go see my family this week. That would be nice.

I got a strange call this morning from a number I didn't recognize, and it turns out there's a recall on some veggies we purchased at Costco. I checked the batches and figured out which ones are affected. We have two large bags of peas that are in the recall. I'll be taking them back to Costco some time this week, probably.

I was impressed by this story of how someone cannot visualize and wonder how many other people perceive the world differently than I do. I mean, does my orange actually correspond to what someone else is seeing as orange? But this is even deeper. This is a completely different way of thinking. How can a person not picture things in their mind?

Speaking of picturing things, I want to see this guy's version of Aquaman.

How about a little bit of Judi Dench and Benedict Cumberbatch? I love how, once Benedict gets up on stage, everyone in the audience seems to be recording it with their tablets and phones. Lovely. I also love how he's not really sure what he's supposed to be doing... he just goes with the flow and jumps off the stage at the end.

Judi Dench and Benedict Cumberbatch from Hay Festival on Vimeo.

Note: Yes, I know a new Doctor Who companion has been announced. I don't intend to talk about it much, since until I see the character in action (in more than just a teaser) I won't really know what to think. If I could have avoided the news, I would have. But those kind of spoilers are often impossible to get away from, sadly.

In more grim news, the story behind a well-known photograph, which might change your perception of the photo. Or it might not, hard to say.