Diane Duane

rossroads: How to Scramble Eggs with Gordon Ramsay 1. he...

Sat, 25 May 2013 03:46:44 +0100

How to Scramble Eggs with Gordon Ramsay

1. he seems like a chill mofo to hang with

2. what the hell have i been eating my entire life

No cussing; just eggs. Perfect. :)

naturamirante: Mystical Forest Castle, Romania

Sat, 25 May 2013 00:58:31 +0100

naturamirante:

Mystical Forest Castle, Romania

dresdencodak: ‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women,...

Sat, 25 May 2013 00:56:01 +0100

dresdencodak:

‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative

An incredible article about the myths of women’s role in history, our biases from patriarchal education and media, and how not addressing those biases creates a feedback loop in fiction that perpetuates sexism.

A must read!

We forget what the story’s about. We erase women in our stories who, in our own lives, are powerful, forthright, intelligent, terrifying people. Women stab and maim and kill and lead and manage and own and run. We know that. We experience it every day. We see it.

…

[T]he trouble is, it’s often hard to sort out what we actually experienced from what we’re told we experienced, or what we should have experienced. We’re social creatures, and fallible.

http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/

finofilipino: Cómo hacer una minitarta de chocolate con un...

Sat, 25 May 2013 00:53:00 +0100

finofilipino:

Cómo hacer una minitarta de chocolate con un toque de sabor a naranja al estilo hombre de las cavernas.

prairie-homo-companion: frickyeah1990s: Roland Mesnier, who...

Fri, 24 May 2013 22:33:20 +0100

prairie-homo-companion:

frickyeah1990s:

Roland Mesnier, who worked at the White House for 26 years beginning with the Carter administration, said when President Bill Clinton came into the White House in 1993, he had a “scary” appetite.

“He could eat five or six pork chops.” He recalls the episode of a strawberry cake he made one evening. Clinton devoured half of it all by himself, and the next morning he wanted more. ‘No one could find the cake,’ says Mesnier, who had a face-to-face with the distraught commander in chief. ‘Clinton was pounding on the table and shouting, “I want my goddamned cake.”’

me too buddy

What is it about being High in Government and cake?

powells: “In a sense, one can never read the book that the author originally wrote, and one can...

Fri, 24 May 2013 22:19:00 +0100

powells:

“In a sense, one can never read the book that the author originally wrote, and one can never read the same book twice.” ― Edmund Wilson

Yeah, well. But one level deeper: the author can never write the book that the author reads in his/her dreams, the construct of desire. Mere mortal matter, paper or electrons, aren’t strong enough to bear the weight of what the auctorial heart would execute if it only had the power on this plane… but the poor heart’s just made of meat.

No matter. Here we do what we can. But someday every writer will come to a place where the organs of execution are equal to the vision. Souls, don’t stray unescorted into Writer Heaven: it’ll burn the ectoplasm off your theoretically-adamantium bones.

Best web designer ever

Fri, 24 May 2013 21:24:33 +0100

Or actually, form designer: the one who in the sign-up form Peter is presently filling in, included the following option in the “address” dropdown menu:

My address does not include a postcode

IRELAND BLESSES YOU.

petermorwood: dduane: Just a quick note for those interested:...

Fri, 24 May 2013 17:27:00 +0100

petermorwood:

dduane:

Just a quick note for those interested: the New Millennium Edition of WIZARD’S HOLIDAY will launch tomorrow, Spread the word.

Meanwhile, my eyes are crossing from proofing this thing. I’m going to go fall over now.

(clunk)

Your eyes were definitely crossing, hon. There’s something missing. Remember this little plaque on the wall beside your desk…? (-D

WAIT WHAT???

ETA: OK, all the files have been fixed and have the right cover on them now… so when you’re all finished laughing at me you can run over here and buy one if you like. (If you’re on the Ebooks Direct mailing list, wait till you get your notification mail; there’s a little something in there for you.)

…I’m never going to live this down, am I. Somebody is going to be dining out on this for years. (Somebody who had better hurry up and have his damn shower and take me down to the pub because I want a pizza, dammit. The day I’ve had, sheesh…)

EETA: passeriform: my ask box ate your query and I can’t get into yours. Anyway, the codes are working OK. Try a little later? or with another browser?

fuckandyes: No, Batman! It’s not the Penguin! tompeyer: The...

Fri, 24 May 2013 13:43:14 +0100

fuckandyes:

No, Batman! It’s not the Penguin!

tompeyer:

The most glamorous of all trains!

Nuare Studio

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:51:44 +0100

Nuare Studio

Creedence Clearwater Revival dining at Taco Bell in 1969

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:14:55 +0100

Creedence Clearwater Revival dining at Taco Bell in 1969

(via NASA unveils winners in space apps contest - Science)

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:30:12 +0100

(via NASA unveils winners in space apps contest - Science)

"Unexcited? There May Be a Pill for That"

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:00:51 +0100

"Unexcited? There May Be a Pill for That":

“Around once a week, her husband tried to reach through the invisible barriers she built — the going up to bed early, the intense concentration on a book, the hoping he was too tired to want anything but sleep. “He’ll move closer to me in bed, or put his arm around me, or rub my back.” She willed herself not to refuse him. And mostly, she didn’t. Usually they had sex about four times each month. But it upset her that she had to force herself and that she put up those barriers to deter him from reaching more often.

“I’m scared that if it’s slimmed to this by now, what’s going to happen as we get older?” she said. “I want to stay close, not just psychologically, physically. I want to stay in love. I have a friend, they have sex so intermittently, every three months. She is so unhappy. I don’t want that to happen to me.” She longed for a cure, a tab of magic. As she got into her car in the parking lot at the center, she hoped that her first set of pills had been placebos, that she’d been given fakes for the first eight weeks, that today she was driving away with the real drug and that their sex life would be transformed.”

Just a quick note for those interested: the New Millennium...

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:18:13 +0100

Just a quick note for those interested: the New Millennium Edition of WIZARD’S HOLIDAY will launch tomorrow, Spread the word.

Meanwhile, my eyes are crossing from proofing this thing. I’m going to go fall over now.

(clunk)

clublettreurs: Club Lettreurs - Stam Café Bruxelles

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:23:51 +0100

clublettreurs:

Club Lettreurs - Stam Café Bruxelles

hedwig-dordt: redscharlach: The existence of Showerbatch...

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:19:16 +0100

hedwig-dordt:

redscharlach:

The existence of Showerbatch footage may have done a little to compensate for the lack of half-naked men in Star Trek Into Darkness, but the NEXT Trek movie definitely needs to take a more egalitarian approach to lechery. Since the Powers-That-Be seem to have no problem thinking of excuses to show scantily clad ladies, here’s my suggestion to help them even up the score…

(snicker)

neil-gaiman: My first author copy arrived. I am proud as Punch....

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:37:41 +0100

neil-gaiman:

My first author copy arrived. I am proud as Punch. It’s a beautiful design.

View more Neil Gaiman on WhoSay

So nice-looking. A good cover is a marvelous thing. :)

Rebloggable-d by request: Ship naming conventions: slash versus smoosh / Spirk vs K/S?

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:41:00 +0100

evalilith asked:

Here is a question that has plagued me for some time and that you might be able to answer: I know that Spock/Kirk was the original pairing name and the origin of “slash” as a term, but is “Spirk” still relatively old as a name for the ship? And if it is from the old guard, do you happen to know why (oh why) they didn’t go with “Spork”? If it is in fact my contemporaries who created the term, I apologize for the bother.

Others might want to chime in on this, but if my memory doesn’t deceive me, the smash-fragments-of-two-names-together-forcibly convention for indicating celebrity couples and (eventually) putatively-shipped couples is no more than about ten years old. So the “Spirk” convention wouldn’t be any older than that, max. Up until then, the preference — insofar as I noticed — was always to use slashes between full names.(Which I kind of prefer, as some of the smashed-together ship names are pretty ugly.)

And (again, if my own observation’s to be trusted) I don’t recall anyone using “Spirk” until the first rebooted Star Trek film came out in ‘09. And even then, not immediately. But I think I would have noticed, because the word “Spirk” immediately reminds me of an old joke mentioned in Whitfield’s The Making of Star Trek, where Roddenberry & Co. are discussing the convention of all male Vulcans having names that start with the letter S, end with the letter k, and have five letters. A long chain of silly memos go back and forth among Trek staffers on this subject: “Spirk” is one of the names that comes up. And someone says in one of these memos that this naming style could be problematic when constructing the names of Vulcan legal firms, which would all sound like “Speek, Spirk, Spack, Spunk and Roddenberry.” (The last name — the memo says — inserted to make it plain that this is science fiction.) :)

…Anyway, I don’t think “Spirk” can be blamed on the older wing of the fandom. And as for not wanting to use Spork, well, after all, that’s a utensil. ;)

(ETA: notes here also from the ask box on the original message:)

From kiranwearsscienceblues:

From what I’ve heard about Spirk vs. K/S, “spirk” originated on Tumblr (wasn’t even a thing with the 2009 film fans on LJ) primarily because of the tagging system, which can’t handle slashes. “Spirk” was probably chosen over “spork” for the same reason - that when searching for the tag, we don’t get images of sporks with our fic and art.

From intheafterlight:

I have seen name-smushing predating that ‘about a decade’ timeline, but that was exclusively in Japanese media fandoms (anime and manga both). I couldn’t tell you if the practice arose independently in celeb/Western shipping, or if it came about with anime and manga’s increased mainstream acceptance -> people using it for Western fandom shipping -> reporters picking up on it for celebs. Or if Western shipping is linked to anime/manga practices and the celeb culture came up with it independently.

Here is a question that has plagued me for some time and that you might be able to answer: I know that Spock/Kirk was the original pairing name and the origin of "slash" as a term, but is "Spirk" still relatively old as a name for the ship? And if it is from the old guard, do you happen to know why (oh why) they didn't go with "Spork"? If it is in fact my contemporaries who created the term, I apologize for the bother.

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:25:33 +0100

Others might want to chime in on this, but if my memory doesn’t deceive me, the smash-two-names-together-forcibly convention for indicating celebrity couples and (eventually) putatively-shipped couples is no more than about ten years old. So the “Spirk” convention wouldn’t be any older than that, max. Up until then, the preference — insofar as I noticed — was always to use slashes between full names.(Which I kind of prefer, as some of the smashed-together ship names are pretty ugly.)

…Anyway, I don’t think “Spirk” can be blamed on the older wing of the fandom. And as for not wanting to use Spork, well, after all, that’s a utensil. ;)

(via Astronomers: Massive galaxy collision a ‘train wreck’ in...

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:17:11 +0100

(via Astronomers: Massive galaxy collision a ‘train wreck’ in early universe | Science Recorder)