This short anonymous essay about misconduct involving patients in the Annals of Internal Medicine is rough, and I’m glad it’s out there:
Someone gasped. I stared at David. He shifted in his seat and crossed his arms on his chest. A splotchy red rash appeared on his neck. Staring down at the table, he murmured, “Man, I was just standing there trying to learn. The guy was a dirtball. It still pisses me off.”
David glanced at me. I asked, “When your attending said that and laughed, did you laugh, too?”
My question touched a nerve; perhaps my tone was accusatory. David snapped back, “Yeah, I laughed, but what was I supposed to do? Have you ever been in a situation like that?”
I looked down at the table in front of me and saw my black ballpoint pen. I focused on its gold clip for a moment. I placed my index finger and thumb beside the pen and spun it in place. It twirled and clicked as it spun around and around. I stared at the rotating pen and remembered. I felt my face flush. The spinning pen slowed, and then the clicking stopped. I looked up at David. “Yes, I have.”
*
Who won the Hugos, and why does it matter? (Here is a Storify that points out some missing deets.)
The mainstream press first started reporting on the gaming of the Hugos’ nomination system back in April, when fan-favorite authors who were women and people of color had been largely edged out of the final ballot. But few outside the field really cared. They treated it like nerd-on-nerd violence—unfortunate and ugly, but confined to one of literature’s crummier neighborhoods.
It’s not inconsequential, though. Not by a longshot. The Puppies’ revolt did not merely push back against the gains traditionally underrepresented people have made in a maligned literary sub-genre. It was a backlash against gains they’ve made everywhere. Like the sound of starship engines, the Hugos don’t exist in a vacuum.
*
Six Feet Under, the oral history:
After they read it, they invited me in, and I went in and met with Carolyn and with Chris Albrecht, who was running HBO at the time, and they said, “We really like this, but we have a main note for the whole thing: It feels kind of safe. Could you make it more fucked up?”
And I told them, “Well, yeah… I would be very happy to fuck it up for you. I mean, I don’t want to just fuck it up arbitrarily, but if we can make the characters messier and weirder, yeah, absolutely.”
*
On Saturday afternoon, I received my copy of Nichelle Nichols’ out of print memoir, Beyond Uhura, and proceeded to livetweet it until Sunday morning. It is the greatest thing of all time, you can peruse my timeline for the exhaustive details, but I wanted to share just a sampling of my favourite moments here:
IT HAS ARRIVED pic.twitter.com/7I4qTMtgJs
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 22, 2015
Nichelle had an affair with Roddenberry, but when she found out he was ALSO cheating on his wife with Majel Barrett, she peaced out. — Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 22, 2015
From when Nichelle Nichols was studying Afro-Cuban dance. This is the best anyone has ever looked in the world. pic.twitter.com/F1rsBVhxQu
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 22, 2015
At the part in the memoir when a guy tries to rape her and she yells “I’VE MADE UP MY MIND: YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO KILL ME” like a LIONESS. — Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 22, 2015
(She scares him off with her ferocity and the cops ignore her but she keeps going until she gets this rich influential rapist CONVICTED.)
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 22, 2015
The producers refused to put Nichelle on contract for Star Trek bc they didn’t want a black woman on the bridge, so she was a day player. — Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 23, 2015
But Roddenberry jammed her into every episode so she wound up making MORE than she would have under contract. SUCK IT.
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 23, 2015
Nichelle’s teeth were so perfect that DeForest Kelley demanded to know “who did her work” and REFUSED to believe she just woke up like that. — Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 23, 2015
But the mailroom guys tipped her off and she went down and saw CRATES of undelivered letters from adults and kids who loved her.
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 23, 2015
Everyone knew it was the last season of Trek and she would be free but he refused to let her go and ruined what would have been a 7 yr gig. — Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 23, 2015
“This was not the last time Gene would let me know that I could never really leave him.” BADLY DONE, Gene. BADLY DONE.
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 23, 2015
She’d never seen Sulu, the world’s biggest Anglophile, so happy as at high tea w the royals, crooking his little finger. — Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) August 23, 2015
*
My friend Carrie’s new puppy went for a walk with some big dogs:
*
Serving food to the superrich:
NOT everyone can do this kind of work well. Captains joked that it wasn’t worth learning a person’s name until he got promoted at least once. But get promoted and suddenly you were admitted into an inner circle of people who excelled at this sort of thing. Most members of the service staff shared one thing in common — a quiet alliance against our betters: the guests, and our managers. When someone spoke about the “swan” in lineup, a metaphor for the ideal server, churning tirelessly beneath the surface while maintaining the impression of absolute poise to the casual observer, there was never a hint from management that, like us, they understood the psychological dividedness their favorite symbol suggested. But as captains or servers or sommeliers, our job wasn’t just serving food, it was playing a part, and we did it with a degree of self-conscious irony that our bosses seemed incapable of.
*
Deleted comment of the day:
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Nichelle Nichols is my hero and a frequent topic of conversation in the house. <3 her.
It seems fitting that I followed up the NYT fine-dining piece with a visit to the French Laundry website. O_O
Those big dogs tho. Who knows what they are? Black German Shepherds? Pookahs in dog-form? Are they dire wolves? Can I. Can I hug one.
Other end of the spectrum: Sad Puppies. Vox Day etc need to deal with the fact that it is the future and the future has consequences; a black man on a hoverboard was arrested at an airport, ffs. Science fiction needs to reflect the world and make it bigger or what’s the point? What’s the frigging point?
I cannot believe that shitheel is still around, good gods.
I knowwwwww it’s like watching the zombie of sci-fi past shuffle around. Not even the good sci-fi past! The generic knock-off shit! Why can’t he just be content with his little cadre of brainless fans and let the rest of us explore the universe?
I think they’re Groenendaelers.
Interesting! My parents have a Belgian shepherd of the short-coated type, but I didn’t even know they had a rough-coated type. Handsome! Super huggable! Would bury my hands in that luxuriant fluff.
The best dogs, really. And so pretty!
When i first saw the picture, my exact thought was your question and my response was also that they were probably black German shepherd because of their ears.
DUMBLEDORE IS GAY, why would he leave Hermione
Tide comes in, tide goes out, you can’t explain that.
Not to mention that the commenter overlooked a CORE TENET of the Ronbledore theory which is that time traveling reverses sexual orientation. Obviously “Dumbledore is gay” *supports* Ronbledore rather than refuting it!
Silly commenter.
Lesson learned from all the deleted comments every day: People get really upset/vehement/defensive over both Harry Potter AND Ayn Rand. Interesting.
But they seem oddly silent on the Ayn Rand’s Harry Potter posts!
Oh my gosh, it’s the perfect combination post. If Ayn Rand Wrote Harry Potter? If Harry Potter Characters Read Ayn Rand?
Either way, just imagine the angry replies.
Oh man, it seems you have not yet encountered the joys of one of my favorite Toast series: http://the-toast.net/2014/05/27/ayn-rands-harry-p… (The series is complete; Mallory has done all seven. Enjoy!)
I am a new(ish) toastie and I was not aware!! Thank you! 😀
well yeah those ones were all on point
re: deleted comment https://twitter.com/yesthatsthejoke
This seems like as good a place as any to admit that I can’t figure out how to read Twitter. Like… I see the jokes they’re reposting, but not the replies in which somebody points out the joke, which I assume must be the point?
OK so I’m reading Ida: A Sword Among Lions and I am really depressed because the stuff that she was dealing with seems VERY SIMILAR to the same things that are happening to black people today and really have we not learned anything as a society in the past 100+ years??? Sorry, missed the open thread last week and I had to get this off my chest…
Oh God and that ten years during Reconstruction where they think they’re going to build a new South together, then the elections come and there’s intimidation, like hardcore “lose your job if you vote” shit, and then the plague comes.
I need to… try to read that… more. I hit a sad wall when her disabled sister died because they could only keep her alive when they had a man’s salary and a full time caretaker, and when their parents died then she also died soon after because Ida was doing both things on her own.
I’ve only been paying tangential attention to the hubbub around the Hugos and this whole time I have thought that calling them Sad Puppies has been like calling GamerGate supporters “Gators” – but NO it is their actual name????
I got physically ill and super angry reading about the Rabid Puppy guy, what a pair of soiled underpants, the lot of them.
Well, and here’s the thing: I thought Three-Body Problem was deeply flawed and was rooting for Goblin Emperor for Best Novel. However, I could see why a lot of people would like TBP and wasn’t particularly surprised when it took the Hugo. Puppies, on the other hand, appeared genuinely unable to distinguish between “thing I read that wasn’t my cup of tea” and “objectively terrible thing, could only have been voted for because IDEOLOGY”.
I think that’s a standard problem when you’ve been told your whole life that white male opinions = fact. So sad for them to have to understand that they aren’t the center of every universe.
And when you’ve never been taught that white male opinions are ALSO ideology!
If you’re a fish, do you know that water’s wet?
Interesting! I love, love THE GOBLIN EMPEROR but actually ranked it below THREE BODY PROBLEM on my Hugo Ballot. I think for me what pushed it over THE GOBLIN EMPEROR was that I felt like I hadn’t ready anything like it before (even if the characters weren’t as engaging and it was definitely a slower read).
I definitely agree with you about puppies’ inability to distinguish between “my cup of tea” and ideology. I’m always shocked when people seem unable to see past ANCILLARY JUSTICE’s use of female pronouns to see that no, actually it was an excellent space opera with an evil empire, revenge and a really interesting concept of space ships and AI.
Yeah, the pronouns were fun and all, but the way one got to see Justice of Toren reduced to being One Esk Nineteen and then oh so painfully becoming Breq–that, to my eyes, was the heart of the story, and to miss it because of pronouns shows one not to be an observant reader, I think.
My problems with TBP were split between No Science Doesn’t Work Like That Neither Do Scientists and These Characters Are Super Flat Hm How Convenient Their Actions Are For The Narrative. That being said, I did find it an interesting concept and I wondered if I might have been reacting to issues of culture and/or translation (well, except for the science. That was just dumb.)
Goblin Emperor, on the other hand, was just exquisite – in characterization, in setting, and in narrative. But I could see how many people would go, “eh, just another high fantasy”. And that’s ok!
Totally agree on the blinders some people have with the Ancillary books.
I couldn’t quite follow the Wired article on the Hugo’s– is it just me, or was the lede way way buried? I couldn’t figure out which side espoused which belief until 5 or 6 paragraphs in, and I still feel like I’m missing something. I’m glad the “Puppies” or whatever didn’t manage to bully their way to a nondiverse ballot, though. (Or maybe they did, but people chose no winner over their ballot choices? How did they game the ballot, anyways?)
I guess it was written for people who were already aware of the hubbub.
Basically, the two Puppy factions “gamed” the ballot by telling people exactly who to nominate (and since other people tend to nominate very diversely 100-200 votes was often enough to get something nominated). They didn’t have the exact same slates, but there was a lot of overlap. So the ballot had a lot of Puppy-supported nominees on it, and in 5 categories, only Puppy-supported books/stories/etc. were nominated. Last weekend was the award ceremony, and a) in those 5 categories the most votes went to “no award” and b) in other categories non-Puppy supported people won. What that basically means is that while the Puppies were more coordinated, there are still enough anti-Puppy people to make sure they didn’t win any awards.
Thank you! That makes much more sense now–although as we’ve seen in other awards venues, the world rarely needs “help” to make all white/male ballots…
thank you, you have clearly conveyed in a paragraph what a bunch of professional journalists and authors couldn’t do with a million pages of purple prose
I’m glad you included the results, because I didn’t want to read a whole article if the Sad Puppies had won things. That’s some very bright news for a Monday morning.
Though of course the Puppies are still claiming victory, saying the point wasn’t to win awards, but to burn categories and ‘raise awareness’ about the PC liberal takeover of the Hugos / SFF or something.
It’s kind of like when some douche makes a sexist/racist remark just to bait you. You “lose” in his eyes whether you react or not. Their express purpose here was creating a no-win situation for “SJWs”, and I think the outcome was the better of two bad results.
BTW: has there ever been a cooler sounding pejorative than Social Justice Warrior? I’d be happy to call myself that, if I felt I deserved the “warrior” label (I mostly just tweet. Does that count?)
Yeah, this was definitely the better outcome, and hopefully in the future the new rules will prevent this sort of thing. I’m curious what will happen next year since the new system won’t be in place. I assume the puppies will try again, but I wonder with the greater awareness to what they are up to, if there will be a stronger counter-movement earlier.
I love that they feel that SJW is an insult. It really highlights their whole mindset quite clearly.
I’m more of a Social Justice Worrier, and also have the initials SJW, so anyone calling me “a SJW” is technically correct.
Cooler names: Social Justice Paladin. Social Justice Monk? I dunno, you have to be Lawful Good for both, which some people dislike.
I aspire to be a Social Justice Bard, personally.
SOCIAL JUSTICE ROGUE.
So mostly they raised awareness that they’re bigoted Neanderthals, basically.
I mean, hard-sf isn’t my thing, so I doubt I’d have read Torgersen; Wright basically writes thinly-disguised spanking porn; and Day…I have no idea. But I do like urban fantasy, so if Correia hadn’t been all WAAH CONSERVATIVE BUTTHURT ARGHLEBAH I might have picked up one of his books someday.
Not so much now, buddy.
this has been my experience of every attempt to cover whatever is going on with the Hugos
some kind of gamergate knockoff with an even dumber name plus war over whether giving pocs awards is affirmative action gone out of control plus ??????
the explanations I’ve seen from actual writers involved in the fray seem to suggest there might be lots of reasons they’re not getting an award for writing
“Sour grapes” seems to cover why they started it. Not that the ringleaders will cop to that.
YES, you have succinctly covered my understanding of the situation in your second paragraph. Only I really need much, much more, “**~*~puppies~*~**???!!???! You called yourselves… Well, OK then.”
The Hugo ballot is created by accepting open nominations from everyone with a voting membership. So everyone sends in their 5 favorite novels, short stories, etc., from that year, and the top 5 get on the ballot (with the caveat that to be nominated, a work needs at least 5% of the vote.) Since the pool is so big, there are a lot of nominated works and not a strong gap between the lowest and highest votes. The puppies set up a slate and told everyone “vote for this exact set of works,” so there was a much stronger concentration on a small number of works. (Technically, there were two puppy groups, the Rabid puppies explicitly said “vote this slate exactly” and the Sad puppies said “oh this is just a suggestion but if you want to follow a slate here’s the one you should follow.”)
So the puppies did bully their way into an awful ballot, and then the voters chose to take everything on the slate and vote it UNDER ‘no award.’ According to the Hugo rules, any work that finishes under NO AWARD doesn’t even get to call itself “Hugo nominated.” So they got onto the ballot and then lost even the right to say they were nominated. And then, because they are the champions of goalpost moving, they said, THAT WAS OUR PLAN ALL ALONG WE WIN!!!
Ugggggh the “WE MADE YOU VOTE NO AWARD SO WE WIN” tweets were so fucking aggravating. I wanted to tweet back, but it wouldn’t have been productive at that point.
I ended up watching pretty much the entire Hugo ceremony livestream – seriously, more entertaining than the Oscars – and was so pleased and relieved by the No Awarding. Nominating and voting stats were posted the next day and it wasn’t even close, which was reassuring that the mass of people who bought memberships in the wake of Puppyfest were rightly outraged by the slate nominations.
Also, E Pluribus Hugo passed at the Business meeting which should help reduce the impact of bloc nominations starting in 2017. it’s still no consolation to the people who were forced off the ballot by the slates, but at least it’s something.
Ampersand has been following this story, here’s his primer.
I can’t say that I really understand it, it’s all very inside baseball, and when I read the name Vox Day I knew it was a racist, sexist, homophobic shitshow.
The Puppies (there’s technically two groups, but for our purposes they can be treated as a bloc) are the MRAs of the science fiction world. Possibly the best example I can think of that illustrates their worldview is that they claim that the problem with the Hugos these days is that it rewards tedious, message-y, Important Work that is Not Fun To Read and that is by a minority–not like *proper* SF, y’know, like swashbuckling space opera or military SF. Pointing out to them that the 2013 and 2014 Best Novels were both military SF, both space operas, and one was a light and funny work by a white man… worked about as well as you’d think.
It’s obvious to anyone with two brain cells what their *real* problem is: the Wrong Sort is winning Hugos.
And the idea that their swashbuckling military SF is not political or message-y in any way whatsoever. Or that SFF hasn’t had political and social messages from its inception.
True story: I had to read Frankenstein for a course. Thought it was boring at first: I’d expected it to be more like the 1931 movie, and there were a lot of speeches instead. But once we discussed it in class I got more and more fascinated. That book has layers upon layers – and it’s basically where the genre got started.
Excellent point, yup yup. Much like men don’t write gendered work, and white people’s writing is race-neutral.
Nope never all totally normal and neutral and just how people are.
Happy new week, Toasties! I had my first wedding meltdown on Saturday! My wedding hair trial appointment was an utter disaster, and it’s thrown me for a loop. Work owns my life for the next month (wedding is 2 months away), and I don’t know when I’m going to have the time to investigate the alternatives. Plus, I am too horrified by the possibility of paying another $50-100 to go through that again. I’ve been staring at calming manatees all morning, but it’s not quite cutting it.
Oh man that is tough. 🙁
Is this your regular stylist or someone that you got referred to?
The guy who’s been doing my hair since I was a teenager doesn’t do special event hair. He referred me to another woman at his salon, who was already booked for that day, so she referred me to a third dude at the salon.
I showed him a picture of what I wanted (this, or something like it), and he said he could do it. Which was a lie. He had no idea how to braid. No clue! I do a lot of elaborate braiding on my own hair, which is why I wanted something like that for my wedding, and he just failed utterly at french braiding. He wrestled with my head for nearly 2 hours, and the braids were saggy and messy and sad. So, it’s not like I can ask him to do anything different – he is just flat out not capable of doing what I want done.
I know it’s kind of a specialty thing, since it’s not really standard special event hair, but I have no idea how to find someone who can do it, since searching for hair braiding just turns up a lot of salons for women of color.
What a nightmare. I’m so sorry. 🙁
That style is super pretty and I totally understand what you’re saying. My regular stylist is going to be out of town for our wedding, and I just started asking my friends who they’d used or who they knew. For a smallish town, we have a surprising number of salons and stylists, turns out, and I ended up landing on (of all things) the woman who does my mother’s hair. It’s not a foolproof method, but it’s definitely A Way of doing it, and it might just be a matter of, like, pounding on doors (phones/email inboxes) with a stack of pictures.
If you’re using a professional photographer, maybe ask if there’s someone they recommend or have worked with for shoots in the past? I have a photog friend who does mostly weddings, but she also does some boudoir stuff so she works with stylists often.
This is a super good idea.
Call up one of those salons, explain your hair type and what you want, and if they can’t do it themselves they’ll send you to someone who can. There’s a huge variety of hair types in ‘women of color,’ and a good braided has seen them all.
That sounds like a disaster! (But I love the idea, it is so pretty and I really hope you find someone who can help you, and I am following your hair board on Pinterest now.)
I love that do! And I totally empathize with you on the trial-run horrorshow. I wanted some kind of Viking-inspired side braids with a top bump and curls; what I got at the Aveda salon was a cornrow and a deflated bouffant. (FWIW, I ended up doing my hair myself, and it turned out fine and much closer to what I wanted. Can you do it yourself without going into matrimonial hyperdrive of stress…?)
That is my current backup plan. It was just one thing I didn’t want to have to worry about on the day of, but if all else fails, I can.
Have you thought about trying a local school of cosmetology? I don’t usually recommend them for permanent treatments like cuts or colors, but if you want to practice up-dos, that’s a perfect place to go. The students *have to* log a certain number of hours of practice time, and it’s more fun for them to practice on you than on a mannequin. PLUS, their supervisor is checking behind them at every stage to make sure they’re doing it right, and can intervene if anything goes off the rails. That, and hair styles are a pretty non-permanent thing to let them practice.
I like to go for things like manicures or facials, and they’re always very very inexpensive (hello $10 microdermabrasion). Check your area for a Paul Mitchell or a Kenneth Schuler. Our local schools are also named things like “Academy of Hair Technology” and “College of Hair Design.”
AND they’re sometimes available during evening hours because many of the students are taking classes at night. 🙂
Also, there’s a good chance with students that you’ll be getting someone who has recently done a lot of fancy braiding – it is the thing right now. A more established guy might be more used to less-trendy looks. I had hair in that family of style for my wedding and a recent grad had no problem giving me what I was looking for.
It’s a shame you had that bad trial and wasted money right at a busy work-time. What a double whammy. I hope you find someone without too much hassle!
Another vote for cosmetology schools. There are a bunch of Aveda Institutes around my state that are great but I’ve heard others aren’t as good. If I’m there for a haircut and the salon isn’t full the students are usually practicing on each other, and they’re usually practicing updos and styling because there are only so many times you can let someone practice cutting or dying your hair! Just be sure you schedule plenty of time. In my experience schools are cheaper but they can take much longer!
I was going to suggest that as well. The salon I made a wedding hair appointment at closed and never notified me, and I didn’t find out until 3 weeks before the wedding. We went to an Aveda training salon and it was awesome and should’ve been my first choice.
I love that style! Very Gibson-girl-esque.
I did my own hair for my wedding. That was a mistake. In most of the pictures it looks like I forgot to brush it. For a couple of days. (I think it was a combination of wind and too much compromise with a half up, half down style.) I cried when I first saw the pictures ( I am NOT a hair-crying type). I’m putting together an album now, and looking at all the bad hair ones–it is less bad, and kind of funny now. Wanting to save money and avoid hassles with hair–that is Classic Me, as is the Whelp, THAT Was Not Successful sense of humor.
Sharing for commiseration–your hair will be WAY better than mine. (Unless you set it on fire.)
Totally. My main instruction to my photographer was, if anything goes wrong, GET PICTURES. It might not be funny at the time, but that shit is what will stand the test of time.
She did manage to get pictures of one of the cars getting bogged. Sadly she missed my main fail, which was accidentally holding hands with my new brother-in-law as I left the church. (He and my husband are basically identical from behind, and they WERE wearing the same suit, so.)
If you don’t have time to try new hairdressers yourself, maybe you could find a friend with similar hair to you who could have a test run and report back to you? If you have bridesmaids, put them to use. At times like this, nobody is above a little emotional blackmail if that’s what it takes.
I had this exact thing happen before my wedding and also had a TOTAL MELTDOWN. I thought I was basically a rational and balanced person up till that point, turns out no. (Same thing happened with my pre-wedding nails, so I guess keratin-based failures are where my insane bride emotions drew a line in the sand.) I ended up trying a different hairdresser and was happy with the results.
If I were you I’d give myself a couple of days before you make any decisions. You are entering a binding contractual relationship with a long and tortured cultural history, and whatever you think about marriage as an institution, it’s a serious legal thing so it’s not unreasonable to expect heightened emotional stakes. Give yourself permission to freak out a little!
Those “Sad Puppy” guys are wack but you have to admit that they are right about the award statue looking like a dildo.
It is a FUTURE DILDO thanks very much.
but they make it sound like that’s a *bad* thing…
Also, while I was reading the NYT article about working at a restaurant for the super rich, I got a little pop-up at the top saying that the stock market fell over 1000 points this morning, conspiracy???
How does “Dumbledore is gay” refute the time travel argument? I thought it was agreed by leading Time Travel scholars that extended periods of time travel can change your sexual orientation in some cases.
If anything, it PROVES IT.
The Ronbledore deleted commenters are REALLY hung up on this! Magic, sure. Dragons, sure. Fluid sexuality, possibly affected by time travel/magic? NEVER.
I didn’t read carefully and initially assumed the argument was about JKR’s recent “yeah, that’s a good theory” response to the Dumbledore Is Death meme.
So I LOLd at the idea that “But DEATH isn’t GAY!”
There are whole seasons of new Dr. Who that are little else but case studies of this phenomenon!
London Toast Meetup Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/435704426638315/
Product of a brilliant Toast meetup yesterday; does what it says on the tin, FB group for London Toasties, featuring my amaze-balls photoshop skills.
(I know this isn’t open thread, don’t worry I’ll be spamming there too)
I just cannot get into Six Feet Under. I’ve probably watched the first six episodes and…it’s funny but not funny enough to excuse how irritating the characters can be sometimes. What am I missing?
IDK, sometime you just have to be all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and say “this piece of media is not for me, but there are thousands of hours of other media!”
I have done this with many shows and it’s worked p well so far.
Watching the Hugos and the #HugoAward hashtags was a really fascinating experience (though I saw way more gross anti-Semitic/racist/homophobic tweets than I ever want to in such a short period of time again) and I’m happy to try and answer questions for people who are confused about how it works and how the Puppies (both Sad and Rabid) tried to game the system. It’s more than a little confusing, I know.
Also, I see your puppy and raise you BABY JAGUAR AT THE ZOO LAST NIGHT (sorry I’m posting this literally everywhere).
Oh my gosh that baby jaguar is the best thing I’ve seen all day so far. LOOK AT IT’S BIG PAWS.
THEY ARE COVERED IN TINY SPOTS
HE WANTS TO COME HOME WITH MEEEE
You should not only post that picture everywhere, you should create entirely new platforms on which to post that picture. LOOK AT ITS FACE I just want to hug it.
I know that the perfectly normal housecat currently lying on my floor is pretty much exactly this, but I still want a big cat that stays as a kitten forever and is affectionate.
Don’t be sorry! That’s the most adorable thing ever. I want one.
I wish to hug this kitten.
No way is that real, it is a toy, nope
(aaahhh cute, you are lucky!)
I want to pat it so bad! Look at those big fluffily paws! Those kitteny eyes! The little bleppy nose! Ooooh so cute!
I don’t often include links to Real Names of Me and Mine here, but the Burgomaster posted his response to the Hugos and I thought it was pretty great.
Not only was that a great writeup, but now I have Transcendence queued up on the ol’ Kindle!
Oh wow! I hope you like it!
Ah, he’s yours! That explains why it’s so good.
Whee! What a lovely compliment to both of us, thank you!
Does anyone else listen to the Lore podcast? The episode Black Stockings, about changelings, is chilling.
Looooove that podcast! Yeah, the Black Stockings one got to me pretty deeply- that, and the one about the elves for some reason.
No, but it sounds like I need to!
I have just subscribed now and am being creeped out.
It’s the greatest podcast! The asylum one has been my fave so far (so emotional!), with the Jersey Devil episode a close second.
Yes! I listened to this just a day or two ago. I’ve been thinking about poor Bridget ever since.
I also want to reach through time and clobber the terrifying, awful neighbours who broke in and burnt the baby. I’ve been intensely side-eyeing my own (new) neighbours ever since, in case they’re thinking about sneaking in and trying to drown me in the bathtub or something.
Oh MAN that medical story. Here’s a question, guys: I teach a medical narrative course, and many of my students are planning to be doctors. Should I have them read that? Is it like bringing in a giant bag of shit and being like “HERE, SMELL THIS,” especially for the women of color in the class? Is it worth it as a “don”t be like that” tale for people who might be tempted to be like that? If I did teach it, I would probably pair it with Bettina Judd’s incredible book of poems, PATIENT: http://www.patientpoems.com/
I mean, I’m not a health-care professional, and I’ve barely ever even been a patient, but I do have a ton of family who are nurses or doctors, and I would say YES. Those stories were disturbing, and maybe it was a coincidence of the narrative, but that they were both about women having incredibly intimate procedures freaked me right the hell out – I once puked and passed out during a colposcopy, and I would have felt so violated if my gyn and her nurse had made jokes (maybe they made fun of me later, I don’t know, but they were super nice when it happened).
I know that there is a growing number of women who are positions of authority in medical institutions, but I have heard that it’s still something of a boys’ club, and I think women and people of color who are going into these professions should feel empowered to say, “That is fucked up, and I won’t stand here and watch it.” It’s obviously not as easy as just giving people “what would you do” stories, but maybe getting people thinking about it is a good first step.
I say yes. Part as a “don’t do that” lesson, part as a “be prepared to call this out if you see it” lesson. And though I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those two stories were about men violating their patients’ trust in sexualized ways, I have had a few bad/dehumanizing experiences with female medical professionals — nothing on this level, but enough to be like, geez. I think that empathy has to be built into the culture, and one way is through teaching like you’re describing.
Also not a medical professional, but relating to the “giant bag of shit to smell” issue, I know this is a Touchy Subject in Academia(!!!) but you could always use a content / trigger warning prior to discussing these pieces.
<grin> It’s not a touchy subject to me! I use them all the time (though I don’t call them that), and would for this. But even with a heads-up, this seems like a particularly tough one to read and be like, “That could’ve been” (or WAS) “my mom.”
That said, I really appreciate everyone’s points. Thank you! I will think about where in the class it might go.
Do it but warn people? Like, the best things I have read about the whole “should college classes have trigger warnings” are just people wanting acknowledgement that it is OK to be freaked out and have an emotional reaction to something that you are reading in class. Tell people in advance that you’re going to be looking at something heavy and what kind of heavy, reiterate on the day that some people might find it disturbing and that you want everyone to keep that in mind, that you’re happy for people to leave the room, speak to you in private or raise the problematic as issue in class – basically, just do it in a way that validates any female students or students of colour who might identify more with the patients than the medics, without singling them out or making them bear the weight of representation, and try and make that the point?
Also, I read this one recently and I am utterly horrified that all the comments (from doctors!) are “Of course patients should be told to lose weight” and not “WTF THE DOCTOR POKED THE PATIENT WHAT HAPPENED TO GETTING CONSENT BEFORE YOU TOUCH PEOPLE HOLY WTF BBQ”:
https://bma.org.uk/news-views-analysis/the-secret…
Hello! I once had a medical professional ‘jokingly’ hit on me and then ‘jokingly’ ask me not to tell his wife WHILE he was giving me a contraceptive implant and just after I’d been asked multiple personal questions about my sex life, drug use etc. (Background info: the reason I was switching contraceptive methods was that my mother had just been diagnosed with breast cancer, the final nail in a shitty family history coffin. The medical professional was aware of this.)
I kind of wish that at some point that guy had had a super uncomfortable class during which he was forced to confront the idea that that is Seriously Not A Very Good Idea, Like Really What Were You Thinking. So yeah I would say go for it.
To add to my list of reality shows I would watch (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan having adventures, Rick Mercer and Jan Arden having adventures), I would like to see George Takei and Nichelle Nichols hanging out together, being awesome, making fun of Shatner.
Please take my money to develop this.
I had a somewhat similar reaction to Rose Fox’s after reading the Wired article, but it’s worth reading just to see Beale almost literally crowing “there are dozens of us! DOZENS!“
And unironically referring to himself as the “dark lord”.
Not only was the extremely low number of minions hilarious, the fact that he was basically bragging that they would do his bidding regardless of whether it was right or wrong would also be hilarious if it weren’t so damned sad.
Few things are more innately satisfying than to contemplate VD’s grandiosity in relation to his actual (lack of) accomplishments.
This is in no way intended as a defense of Gene Roddenberry; but if I am honest with myself, I have to admit that I would probably be unable to let Nichelle Nichols leave either.
Um, that’s pretty creepy.
Those dogs are big and the puppy is small! I don’t know, that’s all I’ve got this morning. Thank you as always for the puppy pictures.
in recent years, as sci-fi has expanded to include storytellers who are women, gays and lesbians, and people of color
always nice to read a throwback article from a few hundred years ago
but really, more than the embarrassing century slip, what is offensive is the choice of subject/agent in that sentence – science fiction didn’t ‘expand to include’ women et al., not now but not in 1817 either; it didn’t embrace us, we MADE IT. Not that it is anything much to be proud of. but how grotesque to describe it as though SF were our dependent infant child magnanimously allowing us to feed it and sustain it and share its home. thanks for the privilege, you stupid baby.
I say this every time, but: MARY SHELLEY (A WOMAN) INVENTED SPECULATIVE FICTION.
(I mean, if you are more learned than I and can set me straight on this if I’m wrong, please do so I don’t keep saying wrong things, but I always read that between “Frankenstein” and “The Last Man” she kind of cooked up the genre.)
I think basically! it’s pretty arbitrary, if you want to show off you can say it was Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World in oh 1666 or so but you certainly don’t have to. because if you do, somebody will say it was actually Cyrano de Bergerac’s L’Autre monde ou les états et empires de la Lune a few years earlier, but then you can say that satire doesn’t count, but WHATEVER. the only thing you can for sure not say is that if you date the origins of the modern form to the 19th century, that it was invented by a man, because it definitely wasn’t, no matter how you fuck around with definitions.
All you really need to say: it didn’t embrace us, we MADE IT.
*cheers*
I would deeply like to forget that medical story. As soon as possible. I will do anything.
I still have la cucaracha stuck in my head :((((
I couldn’t bring myself to read more than a few paragraphs of it.
good life choice.
If I ever found out that someone had done something like that to me while I was under anesthesia, no Fancy Hospital Lawyer could match my fury and quest for justice. That hospital would be BROKE and that doctor would be FIRED. How awful.
As if I needed ANOTHER reason to be reluctant to see doctors.
I was going to schedule my yearly exam today. Maybe not…
Yergh, I don’t know if this is still common, but I nearly threw up the first time I heard about the practice of allowing med students to perform pelvic exams on women who were anesthetized or otherwise unconscious, without their consent. Who the fuck thinks that that is okay? It’s so baffling to me that people in a profession devoted to the body could have so little regard for a patient’s dignity and integrity.
From what I understand most US and Canada hospitals that have medical students don’t do this anymore (public pressure! woo!) although I was just reading an article from France that was like “but… wait.. how are students supposed to learn if they don’t have this formative experience?? What else do you expect us to do??”
My nurse practitioner program had a partnership with “teach from the table” education consultants* so we were learning from self-confident educated folks (male and female) to teach pelvic, testicular and breast exams so if you’re doing something wrong or your manner is just terrible or whatever they’re willing to say “hey! Change what you’re doing! learn!”
*my mom also used to run a very similar program for a different region, I am biased towards these programs!
This is more open thread material, but Toasties I need HELP. My husband (and 5 yo and infant) and I have just moved to the Albany area (Delmar, to be exact), and I need two things:
1. A really stellar home-based daycare that will do part-time care and is in the 12054 zipcode
2. Friends 🙁
Any recommendations?
I have a friend who just moved to Albany/Delmar (I think she’s in Albany proper, but her family is all in Delmar)! She and her husband are child-free by choice, but they have two adorable pugs. She has the advantage of having grown up there, but she is meeting a bunch of new people through her Mary Kay events. I don’t love MK, but anything that gets you out of your house is probably a good start. Volunteering?
I know there are some Toasties in Syracuse and Rochester, not too sure about Albany. If you’re ever in Syracuse though, give me a holler!
Hi, I grew up in that area! If you haven’t checked it out yet, the Bethlehem Public Library is amazing. It might be worth looking at their newsletter if you’d want to find friends who go to board games/knitting/book club at the library or people who take their kids to the awesome children’s programs. Their weekday hours are 9-9, which left me with unfulfilled expectations of public libraries in every place I’ve moved to since then.
P.S. Soccer is the big sport in Bethlehem and I’m reasonably certain every 5 year old plays in the rec league (that’s how my mom found all her friends when I was 5)
P.P.S. I didn’t realize that drive-ins were not in every town until I moved away. The Jericho Drive-In is pretty great.
Oooh, hi, neighbor! *waves* I’m about an hour south of you. I can’t help with the daycare question, but I’m also new(ish) to the area and one of my favorite things about moving was discovering new favorite restaurants. If you need somebody to go pizza/pancake/insert-favorite-thing-here hunting with you, I could come up! Or we could hunt for the best parks, if you need kid-friendly options. Also, the Hudson Valley looooooves weird little festivals, so there’s lots to explore.
I’ve gone to a couple of meetup groups, but I’ve actually had better luck at the gym. It seems easier to make friends (or at least a connection) when you’re suffering together.
Both the Sad Puppies (“we’re not bigots! We’re about choice! PS: we’re secretly bigots.”) and the Rabid Puppies (“we are totally bigots! But remember the Olden Times when that was cool?”) are fucking terrible. And, like GamerGate, the number of maroons who allowed themselves to be sucked into that vortex of nonsense astounds me. Unsurprisingly, they are claiming that their getting voted out of the awards is in fact a victory. Because they live in a world where they can never lose, even when they lose.
A bigger concern is that the nomination ballot reforms for the Hugos won’t be in effect until 2017. So another year of this tripe from the Puppies. Which means that both Nnedi Okorafor (Lagoon) and N. K. Jemisin (The Fifth Season) could find themselves forced off the ballot in the same way that so many people were this year. 🙁
Also, side-eye at Robert Silverberg for singing “Hare Krishna” at the awards. WTF man, that is peoples’ actual religion, not something out of a curiosity cabinet. Sure, he meant well, and I get the context he was describing (1968 WorldCon in Berkeley), but… ugh.
Well, it’s also true that all those record number of Hugo voters this year get to nominate for next year. So yeah, the Puppies will be back with another slate come January, but the rest of fandom will be back with their nominations as well. (And maybe this will finally galvanize people to nominate in the short fiction categories, which always suffer the most for lack of nominations.) There’s bound to be another batch of No Awards next year, but this too shall pass.
(And the Hare Krishna…yeah. I believe it was meant well with the best of intentions, and I too found his closing “It’s going to be okay” very calming, but it really should not have been done.)
I bought a supporting membership out of sheer annoyance, which was TREBLED after I read the actual works up for awards, many of which I found to be unbelievably boring (exceptions: Ancillary Sword, Goblin Emperor, Sex Criminals, Ms Marvel, CAP 2 WINTER SOLDIER FOREVER ILU BUCKY).
This is the face of someone nominating for next year, tiny yip-yip dogs of gross, and I already have a spreadsheet going. Nine-tenths of everything I’ve read so far is MILES better than the plodding inanity the miniature chihuahuas nominated.
I’m also planning to nominate for next year, though I didn’t this year. I’ve been reluctant to because it seems like a lot of work and also I’m not that well-read in the field, but the puppies have gone and made it important and also I read a thing about how the nominations process doesn’t really depend on individual nominators being particularly well-read.
I don’t have a spreadsheet though, I am not that organized. But the mention of your spreadsheet reminds me of something – can we have a list of Hugo-eligible works published on The Toast & The Butter at the end of the year? I did a little looking through this year’s fiction at one point, but I didn’t make notes and I don’t remember any except Mermaids at the End of the Universe. And I didn’t look through non-fiction, but looking now, I think the “In Which Three Adults Discuss [sf book] Seriously and At Length” posts are probably eligible for related works or something. And I’m sure there are other posts, both non-fiction and fiction, which I’ve missed or forgotten.
There’s a wiki for that: http://hugonoms2015.wikia.com/wiki/Hugo_Nominees_…
Oh, that’s a very cool resource. Thank you!
It’s not quite what I’m hoping for from the Toast, though. I’d really like to see a list of “here’s what we published that’s eligible, if you’re looking for things you might want to nominate,” in a similar vein to the ones that have become common for writers. The wiki requires judging whether one thinks the work in question is nomination-worthy before adding it. Which is fine and clearly more suited to their purpose, but it fills a different kind of spot in my thinking about what to nominate.
Oh, I didn’t realize that. I thought it was a place to note anything eligible that one came across. In that case, have at it, Toast and Butter!
“I’VE MADE UP MY MIND: YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO KILL ME”
So. Much. Respect.
Sorry off topic, but I started to say this on twitter but too many ppl know me there irl and i don’t want to talk to real life ppl about this yet. In 2008 as the Lehman collapse happened and then the whole recession ground into gear I was living on my own in Houston and sinking into the deepest depression i’ve ever experienced and it took me like 4 years to recover and I have never gotten fully over it I don’t think. And so now as this Chinese crash and then the stock market drops have begun it is sending me into a panic and I feel like I am going to end up back where I was in 2008 and I know it’s not rational but I keep just getting so anxious and down about it.
I am so sorry. 🙁 I know the feeling, and the Houston economy right now probably isn’t helping. But, as my Brit co-workers say, “We’ll all muddle through somehow.” Somehow.
: (
*jedi hugs*
You already know it’s not rational, so I could offer you links/pictures/etc showing you this particular couple days isn’t good, economically, but it’s not (yet?) the sort of 2008 scenario— but I don’t think that’ll help.
So, I guess what I’ve got is that I hope that you can get through this bit of market turbulence as well as possible, and that you’re able to get happy, and get solid enough in that happiness so that economics may affect your retirement account numbers, but don’t affect your overall happiness in any significant way.
Y’all I missed the exercise thread last week but HOLY COW LOOK AT THESE WOMEN. Such good mobility. I’d die trying these!
If anyone wants to read a sweet mom tribute and general pick-me-up: https://medium.com/@WomenOfSiliconValley/like-mot…
They handed out actual asterisks with the Hugo Awards! I’d heard people joking about it beforehand, but I never thought they’d actually do it!
N.K. Jemisin’s WisCon Guest of Honor speech from 2014 is a fiercer, more passionate discussion of the current state of the fandom. (And happened shortly after last year’s not quite as depressing Hugo ballot was announced, and has helped me a lot getting through this whole pile of bullshit.)
N. K. Jemisin is the best.
God. Prince Andrew and Fergie were living the dream. If I was a royal you’d better bet all of my time would be spent having space themed skeet shoots and tea parties with surviving Star Trek cast members.
Same. Or, if I could spend even one afternoon playing skee-ball with Sir Patrick Stewart*, I think I could die happy.
(* Not intended as a euphemism, but, you know what, I’d be totally down for that, too)
I finally named my flip phone which I love dearly after I almost lost it last week – Uhura.
I tend to go back and forth on the subject of Roddenberry, but I’m pissed that he wouldn’t let Nichols out of TOS. It used to bug me (well, still does) that the TOS cast outside of Shatner and Nimoy couldn’t get steady work because of typecasting.
I am here for any and all Six Feet Under love. That show was so fantastic, and it had the series finale by which I measure all series finales. (No other show has come close, though the Parks & Rec finale was up there in my opinion.)