Two Great Tastes: Assistive Technology & Slash!

I'll confess that due South fandom has completely eaten my brain.

There are so many great writers in this fandom that there are hundreds of meaty rec posts devoted to single sub-sub-genres. This is not one of them. Today, I must sing the praises of just one fic, which includes the deathless sentence:

“Of course, my foot typing is much better than my footwriting, but the typewriter’s currently being repaired.”

...china_shop's Fraser/Ray K PG romance wherein assistive technology meet slash, and much hilarity ensues.

Cruel Confluence of Superstition & Disablism

Truth stranger than SF, yet again. Brrrr.

People with albinism share some characteristics: a host of vision impairments; very pale skin with little or no melanin; and intense stigma for being so visibly different. Any kind of human, no matter their "race," can have albinism: at the home page of the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, there's a photo featuring African-American, Asian, and White people with albinism.

The absence of melanin in their skin means they're particularly vulnerable to skin cancer, especially in tropical locations such as Tanzania, where there's a relatively high number with this genetic variation: 1 in 3000 compared to 1 in 17,000 here in the US.

Numbers can't explain, however, why some folks are murdering people with albinism in order to use their body parts as good luck charms. Here's an excerpt from today's NYTimes story: Albinos, Long Shunned, Face Threat in Tanzania

--- begin forward ---

The night used to be theirs, a time when Mr. Mluge and his fair-skinned sons and daughters could stroll outside together without worrying about the sun.

Now they bolt themselves in, peering through bars.

Just two weeks ago, while Mr. Mluge’s children were sleeping, a car pulled up to their house and four men got out to look around.

“I’m worried,” he said. “They know we are here.”

Mr. Mluge said he tried to read the license plate. But he couldn’t make out the numbers, and the car drove off.

--- forward ends ---