Inside the Little Plastic Castle

On day one, she was beautiful, and brave, and ready to cuddle. She was underweight, so her sleek black-and-brown body just fills an oval bed. Staring right at the camera with hope and trepidation, her stuffed alligator rests in front.

( Click for pic )

Today was her last day.

( Euthanasia, generally described )

A Statistically Significant Love Song

from HenrikWidegren featuring Johanna Körner Berglund with excellent subtitles in 11 languages!

watch on YouTube or

( stream it here )

(thanks to the Ask.Metafilter thread on Songs about data or statistics)

I was listening to Lingthusiasm, (the podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics) and Gretchen plugged an old yet still-wise blog post. While her advice is particularly helpful for graduate students, it also applies to SF cons and any context where you’re a fan and want to actually communicate with the presenter.

How to interact with someone who’s just given a talk - A guide to academic conversations

The key thing to realize is that most of the time, you know more about the speaker than they know about you, so you need to start the conversation and you get to pick what it’s about.

[… snip …]

(a)s someone who has now been on the receiving end of occasional fangirling, I find it endearing but also I don’t always know what to do with it. It’s super helpful if you can set us on the course of having an actual conversation, rather than putting me into the weird position of “why yes, I agree, I am awesome.” It’s always nice and safe to start with “I enjoyed your talk” but follow that up with something concrete.

https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/145122859819/how-to-interact-with-someone-whos-just-given-a

Declaration of Interdependence from queerspacepunk (aka emmett)

A tiny snippet from a lovely thread

i want to be asked to come over and help put my friend's kids to bed as casually as they might text their spouse and ask them to pick up milk on the way home

i want to stop and pick up milk for another friend because i know their spouse hates the grocery store

i want to buy fruit that i dont like because it's on special and i know people who do

i want to pass lemons over the fence and to take my neighbours bins out when the forget

i want group chats instead of rideshare apps, calls in the middle of the night because someone's at the hospital, lonely or hungry or both

i want to do the dishes in other people's houses, extra servings wrapped in tinfoil and tea towels so it's still warm when you drop it off, a basket of other people's mending by my couch

i want to be surrounded by reminders that 'imposing' on each other is what we were born to do

https://queerspacepunk.tumblr.com/search/interdependence

Today I learned there are graphic resources—icons and banners—on the Archive of Our Own!

https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Banners%20*a*%20Icons/works

(Sadly AO3’s metatags don’t create RSS feeds, so I can’t add one here.)

New DW community for people who archive information from the web: datahoarders

timeasmymeasure provides resources for would-be archivists without tech skills: https://datahoarders.dreamwidth.org/3299.html

Of particular interest to me:

AO3 Downloader: a life-saver for any person who has thought, "God, I wish I could download all of my bookmarks, but that would take sooo long to do individually." Another Github download which is saved by its thorough instructions!

Patrice Jetter is a force of nature. She’s joyous in her clothes and her hobbies (sewing, painting, model railroading) and her confidence in small acts of kindness. She found love with Garry Wickham and they want to marry. They can’t afford to because they’re both disabled. Marriage would end their access to US Federal health insurance and income support.

( Why I loved it and trailer )

Three reddish-brown oak leaves, backs dotted with dew, rest near my front door. One balances at the edge of the black rubber door sill ramp, while the others splay on cool grey concrete, near the grey-green siding. Evokes, I hope, Mondrian.

( click for pic )

They're hidden now, because of course we had our first snow fall--excuse me, "wintry mix." How's the weather by you?

pudding.cool hosts remarkable visualizations of a wide, wide range of data. As their front page boasts:

The Pudding is a digital publication that explains ideas debated in culture with visual essays makes cool shit on the internet. You might have seen our story on women’s pockets, but we’ve also made stuff about mapping famous people and celebrity name spelling.

The point of the site is making aesthetically pleasing data visualization, and the design withstands being zoomed up to 175%. I can’t speak to its accessibility otherwise. What’s revved me up this time is

Who gets shipped and why?

Extensive data visualization of relationship patterns in fanfic on the AO3. They quote thinkers I’ve enjoyed in the past — Kristina Busse and Joanna Russ among many — and as a treat, they host a random relationship generator at the top of the page.

( 125 word snippet )

https://pudding.cool/2024/10/fanfic

The OED Cares About Fannish Language

The Oxford English Dictionary was an early fandom for me — our family squabbled over who got the magnifying glass when the Compact OED arrived in 1971. (It squeezed 20 volumes into two by making the print tiny — essentially a paper microfiche.) So I was charmed by Dr Catherine Sangster’s article "Looking back at Geek Dictionary Corner"

( 125 word sample )

https://nineworlds.co.uk

And there’s more…

Seminar: The influence of pop culture on mainstream language

Thursday, November 21, 2024
1700 UTC (11:00 a.m. central US & Canada)

Join editors Dr Catherine Sangster and Fiona McPherson, and guest speakers Prof Dr Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer and Dr Fraser Dallachy for a discussion on the language of science fiction, fantasy, gaming, and other specific fandoms:

• How and why language that develops in these communities is adopted more widely
• How does the OED monitor these developments, and decide what should (or should not) be recorded
• Interesting examples
• The influence of World Englishes varieties and other languages
• Q&A time – bring your questions to the panellists or send them in advance to oed.uk@oup.com

Sign up to watch live https://events.oup.com/oup-academic-marketing/OED-pop-culture.

Will probably show up on OxfordLanguages’s YouTube channel.

I write to urge the use of Usonian to mean "someone who lives in the USA."

The noun Usonia is formed from the first letters of the United States Of North America. Add the "-ian" suffix meaning "from this place" to make a very useful adjective.

Many writers of my acquaintance recognize this issue, and use USian to describe USA residents. Unfortunately, USian is hard to say. Usonian rolls readily off the tongue.

Why bother? This point was brought home to me while chatting in an English-language practice conversation with a visitor from Chile. He was dumbstruck—how dare these estadounidense claim ownership over all of America?

America, of course, begins way up in Nunavut, Canada, North America and extends all the way south to the Diego Ramírez islands in Chile, South America. Usonian is a more precise way to describe people from the United States.

You may have heard the word before: Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Usonian house as an affordable architecture that responded to the width and openness of the US suburban. The first Wright Usonian house is just a mile from me.. While Wright is often credited with coining the term, the credit is actually due to Scottish immigrant James Duff Law, who wrote in 1903:

We of the United States, in justice to Canadians and Mexicans, have no right to use the title "Americans" when referring to matters pertaining exclusively to ourselves. A much more euphonious word is "Usonia," and as it represents in a similar way the "United States of Northern Independent America " (a most important qualifying and accurately descriptive adjective being added) I am inclined to think it makes a perfect word and a dignified name to designate our land, our people and our nation — "Usonia," "Usonian" and "Usonians" sounding equally well. It has also to us Scots the added merit of making a good rhyme to Caledonia, and thus knitting more closely together both Usonians and Caledonians.

Here and There in Two Hemispheres

What say you! American? USian? Usonian? Terran?

In particular

Perfect Spring Weather

highs around 70°f/20°c and lows around 55°f/13°c, mostly sunny with flamboyant clouds

Mad Gluten Free Fest

hosted by ALT Brew which makes (you guessed it) GF beer. Found some scones without cream that still tasted great. One vendor claimed bagels, but they were baked not boiled so nevermind. They also sold crypto rye bread. (Caraway seeds helped, but it lacked that nice sour-sweet flavor I remember).

The Blessing of the Bicycles

hosted by Trinity Lutheran Church, aligning with

Madison Bike Week

It’s been an institution for decades. Several mayors have rode in previous years; the current mayor regularly commutes on her bike. In a former life I was a bike mechanic and enthusiastic 3-season cyclist. Now I love the extensive bike infrastructure because the paths are blacktop (asphalt aka bituminous) which means much smoother rolling in my powerchair, at its full speed of 6.5 mph/10+ kph. Even better, the transportation department decrees that the bike routes be cleared to the same schedule as the "salt routes," which are the key roads for getting to school and to work

Best get-out-the-vote metaphor

Thanks, sonia for pointing me:

“Voting isn’t marriage, it’s public transport. You’re not waiting for “the one” who’s absolutely perfect: you’re getting the bus, and if there isn’t one to your destination, you don’t not travel—you take the one going closest.” From Vicky James on Medium

What lovely things happened to you?

I was delighted to learn that I wasn’t imagining a new trend in car paint. Hank Green hankschannel also wondered why more and more cars look like clay and demonstrated how to find out the reason (at his typically fast pace and high volume, with B+ autocraptions).

Nardo Gray is the original case—a dark gray that's contrasty enough to use for large but not regular-size print. Audi tests its cars at the Nardò, Italy racetrack. That’s where they debuted this doubly cool color. (Not only is it soothing, it's got blue undertones, unlike the brown undertones that create warm grays.. Much more detail at nardo-grey.com.

What makes these colors unusual is the lack of metallic paint (no little flecks of reflective metal, what I called "candy flake" when I was assembling model cars growing up.) So now I find myself hollering Nardo! whenever I catch sight of these mellow colors. Do you roll with nardo or do you prefer shiny candy flake?

Hank explains on YouTube ( or stream him right here )

I appreciate the eloquent exploration of the social model of disability by Sunaura Taylor and Judith Butler as they stroll through San Francisco, with bonus thrifting (on YouTube no CC) and transcript. It’s an excerpt from Astra Taylor’s EXAMINED LIFE, a documentary featuring 9 philosophers walking and talking.

Someone on Ask.Metafilter needed book title text that punned on kitchen topics. Snarky MeFites delivered better than GrubHub, UberEats, and DoorDash combined. Amuse bouche:

• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Flour
• The Wings They Carried
• Finnegan's Cake
• A Distant Mirepoix
• Pho of Flying
• All Quiet on the Western Bundt
• Teff in Venice
• The Adventures of Tom Yum Sawyer
• The Island of Doctor Merlot
• Of Rice and Naan

I still haven’t seen Barbie yet, but I’ve enjoyed disabled people’s commentary!

Dr Therí A Pickens (on Medium) declares Disability Access in Barbieland Holds Up a Sober Mirror to Our World
archived

Poet Johnson Cheu explains why Becky Declines Barbie’s Dinner Invitation both print and audio. He’s referring to 1997’s Share-A-Smile Becky who comes with her own pink wheelchair. Travel blogger Karin Willison reviews all of the disabled Barbie-adjacent dolls.