It’s Friday! The final Friday in August. Most of my news reading was dominated by the aftermath of WorldCon, so there’s a bit more sci fi and fandom news in this week’s links than usual. There was just so much that had to be shared!
Anyway, here is a collection of some of the things that I ran across over the course of the week which struck me as worthy of being shared. Sorted into categories with headings so you can skip more easily:
Link of the Week
Watch Foo Fighters Rickroll Westboro Baptist Church. This link has details plus the video. Or scroll down to the videos and just watch…
This week in Difficult to Classify
Why I Let My Kids Watch “Inappropriate” TV.
This week in Heart-wrenching
Forever and Ever: Losing My Husband at 24.
Science!
Octopuses Are Not Aliens – Nick Lane’s New Book Explains Why.
Distance Ripples: How Gravitational Waves Work.
A pharaonic murder mystery that was solved with forensic analysis.
Anti-Evolution Creationists are ignorant of what a species is.
We Now Know For Sure How Life Did Not Begin on Earth.
Sexual orientation is much more complex than straight, gay or bisexual.
New study finds that homosexuality not ‘un-African’.
Why Do Some People Believe in Conspiracy Theories? “People who endorse conspiracy theories may be more likely to engage in conspiratorial behaviors…”
Stephen Hawking says he has a way to escape from a black hole.
Rare South Pacific nautilus seen after 30-year absence.
Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculation!
Catherine Lundoff on LGBT Science Fiction and Fantasy Before 1970.
Alternate Timeline Hugo Awards.
Why We Need Queer Escapist Lit.
We’ve Always Been Here in the Fandom. Why the WIRED article on the Hugos misses the mark.
I read the 100 “best” fantasy and sci-fi novels – and they were shockingly offensive.
Who Was Afraid of Ray Bradbury & Science Fiction? The FBI, It Turns Out (1959).
Science Fiction Hasn’t Gotten More Liberal—Its Fans Have Gotten More Conservative.
Black to the future: afrofuturism and tech power.
Science Fiction Predicts Our Future for the Next 800,000 Years!
Culture war news:
Australia confiscated 650,000 guns. Murders and suicides plummeted.
Bakers’ Surprise ‘Love’ Cakes Spark a Big Response From Gay Rights Groups Who Received Them. They sent cakes and urged people to go see a truly awful and ludicrous anti-gay film. Ooooookay…
“That’s not true, but even if it were….”
Some People Want My Son Dead, and Here Is Why You Should Care.
Dear Duke Students, Life Gets Uncomfortable.
GAY FRIENDLY CHURCH COVERS HOMOPHOBIC GRAFFITI WITH RAINBOWS.
Here’s How Outrageous The Pay Gap Between CEOs And Workers Is.
This Week in the Clown Car
Donald Trump Is Not a Populist. He’s the Voice of Aggrieved Privilege.
Hispanics Really, Really Hate Donald Trump.
Jorge Ramos Commits Journalism, Gets Immediately Attacked by Journalists.
A Lesbian Officer Maligned in Ted Cruz’s Religious Liberty Ad Tells Her Side of the Story.
Jeb Bush wrote to gay couple: Your relationship shouldn’t have the same status as ‘marraige’. He consistently misspelled marriage throughout…
Trump-ward, Christian Soldiers? “Let me get this straight. If I want the admiration and blessings of the most flamboyant, judgmental Christians in America, I should marry three times, do a queasy-making amount of sexual boasting, verbally degrade women, talk trash about pretty much everyone else while I’m at it, encourage gamblers to hemorrhage their savings in casinos bearing my name and crow incessantly about how much money I’ve amassed?”
This week in Other Politics:
Police secretly track cellphones to solve routine crimes.
Obama should give discrimination its two-week notice.
Georgia County Admits To Illegally Disenfranchising Voters.
This Week in Sexism
Alison Bechdel Would Like You to Call It the “Bechdel-Wallace Test,” ThankYouVeryMuch.
News for queers and our allies:
UPDATED: NOM Hands Over Donor List From Maine Campaign Against Same-Sex Marriage – Details. Years after the U.S. Supreme Court refused their appeal of the state’s campaign finance laws, they turn over the rest of the evidence.
We were here: The gay rub of history comes to St. Louis.
how queer rappers are approaching sex differently.
Silencing the Screaming Queens: Roland Emmerich’s ‘Stonewall’ and the Erasure of Queer Rage.
This Gay Couple Asked All Their Bridesmaids To Wear Wedding Dresses.
Some Thoughts On My 30th Wedding Anniversary in the Summer of Equal Marriage.
Haters At Gay Pride Parade Were No Match For This Kid And His Rainbow Balloons.
The obligatory Hugos post-mortems:
Hugos & Puppies: Peeling The Onion. “When it comes to debating strangers with radically different perspectives, you sometimes encounter what I refer to as Onion Arguments: seemingly simple questions that can’t possibly be answered to either your satisfaction or your interlocutor’s because their ignorance of concepts vital to whatever you might say is so lacking, so fundamentally incorrect, that there’s no way to answer the first point without first explaining eight other things in detail.”
On the SF/F genre and a-holes. “We all have conservative friends and acquaintances who aren’t a-holes, and we don’t seem to have a big problem with them unless they’re crazy bigots like [Vox Day]. We have a problem with a-holes.”
On the Hugo Awards controversy, Sad Puppies, and why there are no winners here. “I haven’t voted in several years, when I did I voted for stories that I loved (plus, to be honest, stories written by my friends)—as do most readers. If readers deliberately voted for stories about gay characters and people of color, perhaps it’s because [those stories] speak of “alienation,” which a great many readers of science fiction happen to have experienced (readers of science fiction tend to be natural outsiders).”
How the 2015 Hugos proved against all odds that SF is becoming more international and more diverse.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it leans towards telling Theodore Beale to shut the hell.
“Unfortunately for your side George R.R. Martin was caught.” “If you think George was “caught” doing something illicit or furtive, at a party to which he invited hundreds of people, many of them merrily live-tweeting and texting and posting photos online, you’re a moron.”
I don’t know how I’m going to keep satirizing the Sad Puppies at this rate….
Wall Street Journal: No ‘Puppy’ Love at Science Fiction’s Hugo Awards.
2015 HUGO AWARDS – THE YEAR OF THE BEST CASE SCENARIO. Though I prefer another friend’s phrase: “The least worst outcome.”
Thieves, Liars, and Why We Care.
ON THE HUGOS, SAD PUPPIES, GAMERGATE, GAY MARRIAGE, BLACK LIVES MATTER, AND THE CONFEDERATE FLAG. “In the face of changing demographics and shifting conversations about equality, a small but furious minority of people with a vested interest in defending the status quo are able to project an overblown presence on social media and in the press, claiming to represent some sort of silent majority that has been intimidated into silence at the hands of ruthless progressives who eat their young, or something… But, instead of waking the silent majority to rally around their flag, the opposite keeps happening.”
Things I wrote:
And the Hugo goes to…. Not just the Hugo winners, I also list all the other awards announced that night.
It isn’t that complicated…. In which I drew a lesson from my experiences with an award, which sadly some others have not…
So many books, so little time….
Mortality, Im- and Otherwise: more of why I love sf/f.
Videos!
[Official Video] Cheerleader – Pentatonix (OMI Cover):
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Dave Audé ft Olivia Newton-John & Chloe Lattanzi “You Have To Believe” (That’s Olivia & her daughter…):
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
AVICII & RICK ASTLEY – Never Gonna Wake You Up (NilsOfficial Mashup):
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Foo Fighters Rick Roll Westboro Baptist Church:
(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: LGBT Discrimination (HBO):
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Octopus to shrimp: “Gotcha!”:
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Font Folly 