I had been thinking I might try driving somewhere to see if we could spot more aurora but, welp. :-\
Honestly I feel like that's part of the purpose of the envelopes, so that if someone is feeling embarrassed or worrying about being judged they can just stick in the empty envelope.
Yeah, people who speak AAVE have this problem but on a much larger scale.
There's something about hearing the actual language of your people recycled endlessly through pop culture that can make it feel performative to use yourself.
Oh, interestingly, my family mostly didn't use that one. I mean I picked it up but from books, not family members.
My mother, a convert, adopted every Yiddish word that came her way, including "naches" when I first gave her grandchildren.
Also putz, meshuggeneh, nosh, schlep, and chutzpah, to name a few.
When I say my family had lost Yiddish I mean as a spoken language, we definitely kept "schmuck."
(I am very curious about this because of course, I was taught Hebrew badly with the Sephardic pronunciations like all Jewish kids in the 1980s and learned how to read it but not speak it beyond some basic classroom words we covered every year.)
I mean, people were losing Yiddish, too, just as other immigrant groups lost the languages they arrived with. My father's maternal side had immigrated in the mid-1800s and spoke no Yiddish by the time my Grandmother was born. Do you think the conceptual switch to Hebrew made a difference?
That sounds really worrying and my brain would go to "is this a stroke?"
I've been pondering what the fanfic equivalent would be here and I think it would be "took the entire text of the story, replacing only the name of the main character. But retyped it from scratch rather than copy/pasting, convinced that this would make it OK."
Probably Green-Purple-Yellow-Blue, because I sleep on the green-purple side and I start where I sleep. But I'm not going to guarantee that I don't start at yellow, then go over to green. The more I think about this the less certain I am how I do it. (Also my husband currently does the laundry.)
Have you ever read the book A LIBERTARIAN WALKS INTO A BEAR? because I would love to read your review of it.
Minneapolis/St. Paul locals, you can get a signed copy of Lyda's new book by either attending her book launch at Dreamhaven on May 25th OR by ordering a copy from Dreamhaven before May 25th. (Or, you know, *on* also works, but you probably want to order by phone if you're doing it day-of.)
If you can make my upcoming Book Launch DreamHaven on Saturday, May 25, I'd love to see you!
IF NOT, remember Dreamhaven can ship ANYWHERE, so you can order through them and have me sign it at the event! (To order: dreamhavenbooks.com/ordering-dre...)
dreamhavenbooks.com/event/welcom...
Join us on May 25th to help celebrate the launch of a new title from local author Lyda Morehouse! There will be reading, signing, and snacks.
Here’s the description of the new book, Welcome t...
"The Year Without Sunshine" is a Locus Award finalist for Best Novelette! I am thrilled (and also delighted to see many, many friends on this list!)
locusmag.com/2024/05/2024...
The Locus Science Fiction Foundation has announced the top ten finalists in each category of the 2024 Locus Awards. These results are from the February 1 to April 15 voting, done by readers on an o…
locusmag.com
"The Year Without Sunshine is a Locus Award finalist for Best Novelette! I am thrilled (and also delighted to see many, many friends on this list!)
locusmag.com/2024/05/2024...
The Locus Science Fiction Foundation has announced the top ten finalists in each category of the 2024 Locus Awards. These results are from the February 1 to April 15 voting, done by readers on an o…
locusmag.comThe thing that I find even more outrageous than Facebook and Google taking these ads is that people's credit cards aren't helping them. If someone charges your credit card for something they then don't deliver, you're supposed to be able to do a chargeback. That's what chargebacks are FOR.
Anyway I think Swordheart is also a really good place to start. I think my recommendation to a new reader would be Swordheart, then Paladins Grace, Strength, and Hope, then the Clocktaur War duology, then Paladin's Faith.
...hanging out with cheerful handsome Jorge and all the other Extremely Hot Kinda Uncomplicated demon-hunting paladins. (Obviously, I did not read Paladin's Faith until it came out, because I think that also drops that detail.)
I read the Paladin books first, then Swordheart, and only then picked up the Clocktaur War. I think that order worked really well, because for one thing, the revelation about how the Paladins of the Dreaming God do exorcisms lands so much harder when I've spent all those prior Paladin books...
They didn't exactly decay but some started to malfunction. Mostly they just stopped working but the whole plot of the prequels revolves around a wonder engine that is doing something other than what it was built to do.
Yeah, the Wonder Engines of Ursula's White Rat universe seem like a good example of what's described.
I think a big piece of the background vibes is that so many people believed in 2016 that it was going to be a blowout for Hillary because who the fuck would vote for the "grabbed 'em by the pussy" guy, ffs. Separating a reasonable assessment of reality from my overpowering anxiety is hard, tbh.
But it does really feel like there's been a proliferation in recent years.
I will note that I found out at some point that the fact that there were a gazillion types of bulb bases (not just good old A19) was not actually NEW -- it was just that my parents very deliberately put in ONLY light fixtures that took the A19 base.
LED, Soft White, 60W replacement. "Soft white" (and yellow packaging) is code for "looks basically like an incandescent," whereas "daylight" (and blue packaging) is supposed to be a more natural light similar to sunlight. If what you want is "similar to incandescent" it's not what you want.
If you're busy marketing to the light bulb equivalents of gearheads, all the people who just want to unscrew a burned-out bulb and replace it with a new bulb will be like, "where are the NORMAL LIGHT BULBS, man, I just want a NORMAL LIGHT BULB."
Going back to the "mental load" problem, I think one issue is that the early adopters are people who are excited about whatever the item is. Like there were people who were very willing to nerd out about superlative light bulbs. And they're the initial target audience.
oh my god, SERIOUSLY. And yeah, the whole "dimmer switch" thing is still a problem. I have a light in my kitchen that simply does not ever turn off.
3. The bulbs were way more expensive and with CFLs, when they told us they would last way longer, they were lying. Turns out it's true for LEDs! But I'd already started assuming that "lasts for 10 years" was a completely bullshit claim, so it took me a long time to believe it.
Don't make me look up how many lumens a 60W incandescent bulb is and then buy that many lumens in an LED that obviously uses less than 60W. Just put "60W!" in big letters with an asterisk telling me "sheds light comparable to a 60W incandescent bulb" or whatever.
And kinda demonstrates one of the big problems with transitions like this. In theory people should want The Better Thing, but most people hate change. During a transition, make the default option at the front of the shelf whatever most closely duplicates the *user experience* of the old thing.
2. The mental load of *picking light bulbs* became kind of ridic. I did eventually figure out what I wanted, but the amount of thought and experimentation that had to go into figuring out how to equip my living spaces with the sort of light I had BEFORE this transition started: frankly unreal.
I mean I think the instructions may have been largely bogus and not actually necessary, but no one would ever say "meh. It's not enough to worry about." They'd say, "VENTILATE THE ROOM. PUT ON PROTECTIVE GEAR." Also they just suck, as lightbulbs.
I found the transition away from incandescents annoying in a couple of specific ways.
1. CFLs have mercury in them and there's this whole list of things you're supposed to do if you break one, and "just never break a light bulb then" is not a useful instruction.
I fucking hated CFLs and I'm intensely wary of halogens because of the halogen torch-style lamps of the 1990s being horrific fire hazards.
LEDs are fine, though.
Spent the morning opening thank-you notes from the dearly departed
No, that's paralysis. Parasocial is a cute little bird people sometimes keep as a pet.
No, that's a parfait. Parasocial is when you were fine a minute ago but then someone stepped on your spine and now you can't move at all.
I gotta leave a note here so I remember to add it to my Favorite Stories 2024 list when I get back to my computer
I honestly know next to nothing about when the advances in battery technology took place beyond consumer-end knowledge along the lines of, "I vaguely remember alkaline batteries becoming common in the 1980s and really appreciating how much longer they lasted."
The best thing about those books was the community that formed around them. Which the author then mercilessly destroyed.