clearing out the 2014 linkspam

[firecat]

Why "you can just make your own clothes" isn't always a great alternative for people who can't wear straight sizes. I appreciate the reminder "There is no shame in not having a lot of craft skills, but there is shame in making people feel like they should have those skills."
http://meloukhia.net/2014/12/costuming_while_fat_and_uncrafty/

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This post discusses how there's still pushback against women choosing to keep their surname when they marry instead of taking their husband's surname. I'm disappointed that it didn't address alternatives to the two most common cases: (a) women changing their surnames to their husbands' after marriage or (b) keeping their original surnames. (My outlaw husband and I both chose a new last name.)
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/12/im-getting-married-should-i-change-my-surname

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A few on how women are more harshly judged than men.

Impostor syndrome: The feeling that you’re not really qualified for something, that you are pretending, that you will, at any moment, be caught out by someone who actually knows what she is doing. The constant nagging fear of humiliation as people realise that you were faking it all along, and that you’re really just a pathetic excuse for a human being who tried to weasel your way into a position of respect and authority. The knowledge that, at any moment, someone will expose you as what you really are.

It’s a phenomenon that’s most commonly seen among women, thanks to the pernicious effects of sexism and social attitudes about women – women are taught that they cannot and will never succeed in life, and thus, they underestimate their own abilities. They work harder than men to achieve the same results, but more than that, they push themselves harder when they don’t actually need to, and consistently rate their achievements lower than men who have not worked as hard, and have not achieved the same goals.

I don't generally believe I'm not qualified for things—if I'm signed up to do something, I feel like I get to make it up as I go along, and I know that's how other successful people do things. And so I think of myself as mostly not having imposter syndrome. But I do consistently believe that what I achieve is not very important and not very impressive. (I don't agree with the belief, if that makes any sense, but it is there.) So if that's part of imposter syndrome, then I guess I do experience imposter syndrome.

• This post discusses how men in the workplace use imposter syndrome to undermine women. http://meloukhia.net/2014/11/exploiting_impostor_syndrome/
• “'Women in authority positions are viewed as lacking the assertiveness and confidence of strong leaders. But when these women display such characteristics, they are judged negatively for being unfeminine,' Dr Pudrovska says." I think it applies to other aspects of women's lives as well, such as home life. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/gender-stereotypes-pose-mental-health-threat-to-female-bosses-9883152.html
• "Study: Online teachers get higher ratings when students think they're male." http://boingboing.net/2014/12/10/online-teachers-get-higher-rat.html

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Keith Knight provides a retrospective of his cartoons about interactions between black people and police.
https://medium.com/the-nib/they-shoot-black-people-dont-they-a5d00c790842

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We're going to have to stop making fun of "nucular," unless we want to call singing insects "waps" and flying avians "brids".
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/11/pronunciation-errors-english-language

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Via jae: How to copyedit without excess prescriptivism
http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/74217867222/hello-tried-searching-but-didnt-turn-anything-up

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This one is officially 2015, but I'm sticking it in anyway. Like it says on the tin. Lots of good suggestions in the comments.
http://captainawkward.com/2015/01/02/651-how-do-i-tell-people-what-i-do-if-im-not-employed/

Comments

[trouble]

Re: the one on changing pronunciation, I've recently started listening to a podcast called The History of the English Language and it talks a lot about Grimm's Law and how language shift has rules and can be somewhat predicted and used to reconstruct older languages. It's really interesting, and I highly recommend it.