Post-Wiscon Linkspam

[firecat]

Wiscon panel reports and trip writeup are coming! In the meantime, I collected a bunch of links while I was at Wiscon and I figured I'd post them here.

Good Captain Awkward article about people pressuring you to forgive your abusive family members: #577: Being pushed to forgive because faaaaaaaamily

Scribble cats (drawing by Frederick Walker)

75-year-old transforms 'boring' hedge into giant dragon masterpiece

Many people who read my journal have probably already seen N.K. Jemisin's amazingly wonderful guest of honor speech at Wiscon 38. (Trigger warnings for, in Jemisin's words, "rape, harassment, racism, and other forms of bigotry and abuse.")

Oh yeah, I knew there was a reason I try to buy my ebooks from places other than Amazon: Amazon Escalates Its Battle Against Hachette, on blogs.nytimes.com

The latest internet time-waster: catlike icon maker

A young opera singer recently got panned by some critics, not because she had a bad voice, but because she was singing a romantic lead role and is slightly plus-sized. Jeannette DePatie of The Fat Chick comments. (Trigger warning for discussion of fat hate)

This is a great post about how access to community can depend on how visible you are, and how visible you are can depend on how much you can produce, and how much you can produce can depend on how able you are as well as how much money and other resources you have, and this means people who might be in the most need of help (because they are sick, disabled, or poor) are likely to get less help. I think about this a lot.
Notes on Social Visibility in QTPOC Community by Asam Ahmad

3 Things the Chronically Ill Wish Their Loved Ones Knew by Toni Bernhard. I recommend her book How To Be Sick.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

The hedge! The hedge! That is remarkable. Also a very practical guy, yet a dreamer too: why did you do it? "Plain hedge was boring."

The Toni Bernhard article rang some bells for me. I tried her "How to be Sick," and found that like most Buddhist works, my response is high waves of guilt. Thankfully I was able to do the MBSR-style meditation; I just don't feel virtuous enough for its source.

Thanks for the links!

[firecat]

I'd love to talk about the high waves of guilt thing sometime if you are interested. I've found some Buddhist teachers who don't set that off for me. (But I still haven't ever actually TALKED to any of them. *grin*)