I think we really need to have honest conversations about what it's like to have #cats as pets. It'll help prepare people, especially those who are inexperienced with cats, about the realities of #cat ownership.
"SHANDYGAFF: a very refreshing drink, being a mixture of bitter ale or beer and ginger-beer, commonly drunk by the lower classes in England, and by strolling tinkers, low church parsons, newspaper men, journalists, and prizefighters."
Featured story: "The conservative campaign to harass the libs out of academia has already sent a chill through #Texas’ world-class public universities, making professors and administrators so fearful of setting off the lunatics in charge at the Capitol that they censor themselves—in scholarship or in their communications with students and the public."
Why keep the peace this #Thanksgiving? ”Sometimes we have a duty to condemn injustice in close quarters and call #racism by its name,” writes Editor in Chief @gabrielarana.
After leaving her marriage, Lyz Lenz found herself with stretches of time on her own. "Every day I was alone, I had to ask myself, What do I want to eat? The question seemed impossible," she says. For her Substack, she talked to Margaret Eby, who is working on a book about eating alone. "Margaret helped me understand how what we eat when we eat alone can help us become the purest expression of ourselves — in all our dirtbag glory," Lenz says.
“We have always been here. We just haven’t always felt safe coming out. But there’s no turning back the clock. We’re going to win our liberation today or tomorrow.”
🤖 I have a lot of love for technology, machines, science fiction, and all things robotics. I plan to keep dorky tech talk sequestered to @Sinegrave
🎮 Here, I plan on talking about more dorky fictional things, like video games and movies and books and TTRPGs. Undoubtably, there's going to be some overlap across my Fedi presences.
📖 Still, this is where I plan to focus more on #writing, #essays, #articles, and the like as it pertains to both #sff and #journalism, the latter of which I also study and hold a degree in. If anyone is looking for a writer, let me know!
Each month on the 6th and 21st, this image is posted to my FB (fb.me/johnhenryus), Insta & Discord (@johnhenryus), and Mastodon (@johnhenryus) for any and all writers, authors, bloggers, poets, and other scribes to share their work. Leave your links in a comment, and then share for even more exposure! Fiction or non, verse or prose, it's all welcome! Please limit comments/replies to one per writer per post so everyone gets a chance to be seen. #writing#blogging#poetry#essays
Classic Krakauer Essays on Wilderness and Risk by Jon Krakauer
Spanning an extraordinary range of subjects and locations, these articles take us from a horrifying avalanche on Mt. Everest to a volcano poised to obliterate a big chunk of greater Seattle at any moment; from a wilderness teen-therapy program run by apparent sadists to an otherwordly cave in New Mexico, studied by NASA to better understand Mars...
In this magnificent and often surprising collection of essays Barthes explores the myths of mass culture. Taking subjects as diverse as wrestling, films, plastic and cars, Barthes elegantly deciphers the symbols and signs embedded deep in familiar aspects of modern life, unmasking the hidden ideologies and meanings which implicitly affect our thought and behaviour.
Numbers and the World Essays on Math and Beyond by David Mumford
The three longest essays touch upon the foundations of mathematics, upon quantum mechanics and Schrödinger's cat phenomena, and upon whether robots will ever have consciousness.
Hilary Mantel’s posthumous ‘A memoir of my former self’ is of course of great interest to fans of her fiction, but every one of the disparate, beautifully written pieces in this book is worth reading on its own merits.
FIERY, UNSETTLING, INCISIVE collection of essays delves deep into history and cultural critique as well as the author’s life for a rigorous exploration of power and control, from racism and colonialism to misogyny and sexual violence. A MINUS
Things That Can and Cannot Be Said: Essays and Conversations by Arundhati Roy & John Cusack, 2024
An activist and an actor reflect on Edward Snowden and the surveillance state in this collection that “reads like a whistleblower’s travel diary” (Disorient). In late 2014, Arundhati Roy, John Cusack, and Daniel Ellsberg traveled to Moscow to meet with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
In 2022, there were just 42,000 nuns in America and the majority were elderly. For The Baffler, Lauren Fadiman spent some time with Benedictine sisters and explored the history and decline of religious life. "There was a time when the convent was the closest a woman could get to both the Lord and women’s lib," she writes. "The vow of chastity lifted the burdens of early marriage, bad sex, and potentially lethal childbirth; the habit released women from the obligations of beauty; and the requisite knowledge of Latin and a wide range of religious texts required that nuns be well-educated."
Love, Money, Sex and Death in the 21st Century by Louis Shalako
A mind-blowing series of essays concerning ten ethical and moral dilemmas facing modern science as well as the rest of humanity. The 21st Century is sure going to be interesting.