What intimacy coordinators do.
It’s common to mock Very Special Episodes of TV shows but they have an effect on viewers.
Although largely, forgotten, W.B. Yeats’ sisters Elizabeth and Lily helped shape Ireland’s sense of national identity. The Porter Sisters, once titans of historical fiction, were likewise written out of literary history.
“As a legitimised vigilante, the bounty hunter as a character can sit in a kind of Lagrange point between the pull of the heroic individualist and the pull of authoritarian imposition of order.” — Camestros Felapton on the appeal of bounty hunter characters.
A 1953 ruling on the limits of parody using copyrighted material obviously didn’t kill parody, but it’s still interesting.
More recently, the Onion filed an amicus brief in a parody case.
There’s a legend that Wonder Woman’s one-time mentor I Ching got his name from an error. It isn’t true.
How do we define Native American art? Who gets to make the call?
Ex-President Man-Baby has threatened to sue the Pulitzer Prize Board for awarding prizes to exposes about him. The board is unimpressed.
The ongoing decline of print newspapers’ comics sections.
Heck, an entire newspaper vanished from the Internet a few years ago. Or, as noted at the link, powerful people got it removed.
For some music lovers, Spotify is a flop.
“The problem is not so much the act of appropriation in and of itself, for what is a writer’s job but to imagine the lives of others … the problem is the system that limits who gets to do the imagining.”
“There is something about sex and sexuality that threatens to strip away the context of performance even as it strips the clothes off of performers”
“We dabble a little bit in the ‘90s—which sadly was such an awful decade for music. You have to cherry pick the songs because we don’t want to play a bunch of sappy ballads and we don’t want to play a lot of rap.” — from an article on why oldies stations don’t play 1990s music much.
Yes, recipes still matter.
Diversity comes to The Nutcracker.
One Journey band member wants a fellow ex-member to stop playing their songs at Trump rallies.
An AI-created comic does not qualify for copyright. The US Copyright Office that might change someday.
How do you define panettone and who gets to decide?
The history of unobtanium.
Gerry Conway admires the difficulty of creating a simple image.
Hollywood still keeps trying to adapt unfilmable books.
The Vampires Everywhere comic-book in Lost Boys never existed — but the publisher that produced it did.
Den of Geek strongly objects to the Ian Fleming Estate’s plan to rewrite offensive elements in the Bond books. A wheelchair-user says even if you change the language, you can’t eliminate Fleming’s attitude toward the disabled.
#SFWApro. Wonder Woman cover by Mike Sekowsky, rights to images remain with current holders.
Trixie parked herself down and didn’t want to move. I’m not sure if the attraction was the sight of the bird or the smell of the carrion.
Eventually I got her to move along and we finished our walkies.
And here.
But I’ve grown attached to living in an area with four seasons so I’m not complaining.
“The Hyperloop, a concept Mr. Musk revived based on a proposal from the 1970s, calls for moving passengers through vacuum tubes at around 700 miles an hour. Despite an influx of investor interest, no commercial system has ever been constructed.” — from a Wall Street Journal article on Boring, Elon Musk’s tunnel-building, which the article concludes deals 
In a movie this would probably be the start of something very creepy, but happily this is real life.
On the plus side he let TYG brush some mats out of his fur and snuggled next to her on the couch. That made her very happy. And he’s come back inside since so we know a)he’s forgiven us and b)he can survive the cold. We still want to get him adjusted to at least short periods with the closed door — it’s a lot more practical for us not to endure the cold (or later in the year, the heat) but obviously we’re not going to turn him into an indoor cat.
For those who don’t celebrate, I wish you a happy Festivus, Kwanzaa, Yule, Solstice, Diwali, Hanukkah, Saturnalia (I’m not aware of anyone who celebrates Saturnalia any more, but you never know) or any alternative holiday I’m not aware of. In the darkest time of the year, let’s find reasons to embrace the light, and each other. May your holidays, whatever they are, be happy. And speaking personally, I’m glad it’s not 200 years until Christmas!
#SFWApro. Top cover by Nick Cardy, bottom by Ed Veligursky, all rights remain with current holders.
—and ciabatta, though they came out smaller than I’d expected. Still, easy enough I might try it again when I’m having sandwiches.
Last weekend I made a peppery squash bread though with sweet potato instead, as I had some of that left over.
Last month I also checked a book, Bread Head out of the library. I’ve only gotten around to trying one recipe, a buckwheat flour sourdough banana bread, but it was most tasty.
I hope to try a couple more before I send the book back (I’ll give it an actual review then) but overall I don’t think it’s for me. The authors, Greg Wade and Rachel Hotlzman, are into sourdough starter big time. I like sourdough but not os much that it’s worth keeping a pot of starter around all the time. Still the book did serve as a useful reminder on things like checking water temperature for my breads — possibly that’s why the ciabatta came in undersized.
#SFWApro. All rights to cover images remain with current holders.
It’s like Lady of Shanghai, where Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth have a shootout in a hall of mirrors! Only, you know, not.
Fraser Sherman's Blog 