Jay Lake: Writer

[links] Link salad is a jelly donut

Cliches and other chatter keeps our minds from thinking — Lisa Costello with some further thoughts on my progress through what remains of my life.

More JayCon photos

Cancer gene sequencing effort struggles through waves of false IDs — Muscle proteins, smell receptors show up in some putative lists.

3-D Printer Brings Dexterity To Children With No Fingers — Oh, wow. (Via Melissa Shaw.)

Kenner’s Daddy Saddle. It seemed like a good idea at the time. — Presented without further comment.

Classical sculptures dressed as hipsters look contemporary and totally badass — Hah! (Via Lisa Costello.)

How Cities Compost Mountains of Food Waste

Laser Scanning Reveals New Parts of an Ancient Cambodian City

Sky trains, super bridges: 8 of the world’s most spectacular infrastructure projects

7 worst international aid ideas — Yup. (Via danjite.)

Climate change threatens trouble in the near future, World Bank says — The World Bank is beginning to commit billions of dollars to flood prevention, water management and other projects to help major Asian cities avoid the expected impact of climate change, a dramatic example of how short the horizon has become to alleviate the effects of global warming. It’s amazing, how virtually every scientist, economist and politician in the world outside of American conservative circles has fallen for the liberal propaganda of climate change. Even the oceans themselves have been fooled. Thank God for Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Party keeping the flame of truth alive, eh?

Jindal: “Deal With It” — Republicans are the conservative party in America, but it’s a party that has little or nothing to offer to middle- and working-class Americans, its latest period of unified government was disastrous, and over at least the last twelve years it has alienated millions of people through a combination of incompetence and ideology.

GOP congressman: I oppose abortion because fetuses masturbate — The conservative mind is a wonder to behold. These people actually get elected. By actual voters. Amazing.

QotD?: Berliner, anyone?

6/19/2013
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (WRPA, mostly editorial work on METAtropolis: Green Space)
Hours slept: 5.25 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 247.8
Number of FEMA troops on my block installing Islamic footwashing sinks: 0
Currently reading: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program by Sharon Salzberg; Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Art, Cancer, climate, Cool, Culture, Funny, health, healthcare, JayCon, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, radiantlisa, Science, sex, weird

Posted: 4:11 am Wed June 19 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad takes its place with the lord of the hills

The Adjustable Cosmos — An animated short film with certain affinities to my Mainspring trilogy. (Via bedii.)

Early stop-motion with real insect characters — Uh…

Watch A Robotic Cheetah-Cub Run

Materials Scientists Build Chlorophyll-based Phototransistor

The Faulty Logic of the ‘Math Wars’

Global Attitudes toward Homosexuality — Generally, the more religious a country, the less accepting its citizens are of homosexuality: Ah, the magical link between bigotry and faith.

IRS scandal: Is partisanship overshadowing facts? — Is the sky blue? Is water wet? When you have one party explicitly dedicated to inventing its own facts regardless of objective reality, then by definition partisanship overshadows.

QotD?: Are you in neat little rows sporting canvas frills?

6/18/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (restoring dead computer)
Hours slept: 6.5 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 247.8
Number of FEMA troops on my block installing Islamic footwashing sinks: 0
Currently reading: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program by Sharon Salzberg; Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Cool, education, gay, Links, Mainspring, Movies, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, Tech, Videos, weird

Posted: 4:22 am Tue June 18 2013 | Comments(2) |

[links] Link salad flies before the Flame of Udûn

Birthday Song’s Copyright Leads to a Lawsuit for the Ages — Ah, the magic of copyright. Especially in Happy Birthdayland. (Via tillyjane, a/k/a my Mom.)

Portland’s Hoyt Arboretum attempts to set the world’s tree hugging record — Because Portland! (Via @bobhole.)

Repairing Bad Memories — Hmm. No potential for abuse here.

Who Made That Mouse? — The history of a human interface. (Thanks to Dad.)

Scientists Moving 15-Ton Magnet From NY to Chicago — I think this was one of my word problems in 8th grade math.

Puffed-up hot Jupiters may be getting an electric charge — New model suggests they’re heated up by magnetic fields of solar wind.

The Pope’s Gay Panic — More moral bankruptcy from the greatest pedophilia shelter in history.

Why Dwindling Snow—Thanks Largely to Climate Change—Might Dry Out Los Angeles — I continue to be amazed at how liberal propaganda on climate change has fooled even reality itself. Thank God for Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Party, or this country might have been able to do something about the problem before it got much, much worse. Which would be a shame, because that would have meant liberals were right. Every good conservatives knows it’s far better to drown Miami and dry out Los Angeles than let any part of the liberal agenda succeed.

What Sweden Can Tell Us About Obamacare — Last month, for the 37th time, the House of Representatives voted to repeal Obamacare, with many Republicans saying that its call for greater government involvement in the health care system spells doom. Yet most other industrial countries have health care systems with far more government involvement than we are ever likely to see under Obamacare. What does their experience tell us about Republican fears? Groundless paranoia has long been the conservative stock-in-trade on almost every issue — that’s how you manufacture more angry white men, after all, which by the GOP’s own admission is its key political strategy. Why should healthcare be any different?

Antonin Scalia Does Not Believe in Molecular Biology — Duh. He’s a Republican. The GOP has spent the past decades very carefully and deliberately privileging willful ignorance over either science or evidence-based critical thinking. What else would we expect? (Via shsilver.)

QotD?: Would you stand and fight?

6/17/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (too many errands, not enough time)
Hours slept: 5.75 hours solid
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.0
Number of FEMA troops on my block leaking intelligence secrets: 0
Currently reading: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program by Sharon Salzberg; Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Tags: climate, Cool, gay, healthcare, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Portland, Publishing, Religion, Science, Tech, weird

Posted: 5:03 am Mon June 17 2013 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad wakes up with a JayCon hangover

No, That’s Not Too Much Jay — File 770 is both kind and funny about me.

Mainspring (Jay Lake, Clockwork Earth #1) — A review of my novel by a readeer who really, really didn’t care for it.

Superman: Flying to a church near you — Well, ok then. (Via shsilver.)

A Pocket-Sized Micro House Built To Withstand Severe Weather

Could a Surplus of California Milk Fulfill China’s Cheese Needs? — I was not aware that China had cheese needs.

Restoring Trees to Save the World’s Rarest Parrot —

South Africa’s Cape parrot needs more yellowwood trees to survive.

La Salle’s long-lost ship?

QotD?: Are you as stonkered as I am?

6/16/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (too many errands, not enough time)
Hours slept: 5.75 hours solid
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 248.0
Number of FEMA troops on my block leaking intelligence secrets: 0
Currently reading: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program by Sharon Salzberg; Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, California, China, Cool, economy, history, interviews, Links, Mainspring, Movies, nature, Personal, Religion, reviews, Tech

Posted: 6:33 am Sun June 16 2013 | Comments(3) |

[links] Link salad says it’s time to celebrate a birthday

Jay Lake – Próba kwiatów — An (apparently) largely positive review of the Polish edition of Trial of Flowers.

How we feel can change how we taste fat — Content people can detect changes in fat content, unhappy people do not.

Australian squid eat sperm for better bodies and babies — Presented without further comment. (Via David Goldman.)

Leprosy’s disappearing act came from public health improvements

Japanese eyeball-licking craze carries blindness risk

The Invention: 1928 — Flat panel display?

How Google Will Use High-Flying Balloons to Deliver Internet to the Hinterlands — I do love Google, except for the banal evil that is the Google Books Settlement.

Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere — Both funny and sobering. (Via David Goldman.)

Feds to comply with NY morning-after pill ruling — Conservative sexual paranoia really isn’t a good basis for national policy. I’m glad to see sanity prevailing once in a rare while.

The Tragic Fall of the White Race in America — Yup. Too bad for the Republican angry white man freakshow.

QotD?: Going to be at JayCon today?

6/15/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (too many errands, not enough time)
Hours slept: 5.5 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (exercise room was occupied)
Weight: 246.6
Number of FEMA troops on my block leaking intelligence secrets: 0
Currently reading: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program by Sharon Salzberg; Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Food, gender, healthcare, Links, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, race, reviews, sex, Tech, Trial, weird

Posted: 5:36 am Sat June 15 2013 | Comments(4) |

[links] Link salad wanders into Friday

A reader reacts to Kalimpura — Generally rather favorable. I loved this bit: There are several big themes in the book that I really like too. First, Green is a bad-ass queer woman of color. Her story isn’t about any of those aspects of her, they just are facts about her. Sometimes those facts contribute to her interactions with other characters and sometimes they don’t. This is so important. Especially because Green is young and brave and flawed and impetuous and foolish and special all at once. She’s an individual, not a stereotype, and we need more of those depictions of queer women of color in our literature.

Bride of the Girl Cooties — Cora Buhlert with an excellent link roundup and commentary on the current iteration of arguments about gendering in SF.

Will McIntosh, On Choosing a Title for Your Novel — I’ve had a things or two to say about this in the past. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

The Secret to a Video-Game Phenomenon — I always thought Minecraft is what Lego should have invented.

The Renaissance Military Compass — Ok, that is cool. 500 year old milspec technology. Scroll down a bit when you land on the page. (Thanks to threeoutside.)

Excel Is An Art Form: These Beautiful Images Are Proof — Wow. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

U.S. Supreme Court Says “Natural” Human Genes May Not Be Patented — Huh. Some unlooked-for sanity in patent law.

Gene/culture co-evolution

Oxygen mystery: How marine mammals hold their breath

Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories — Because reasons, damn it! (Thanks to David Goldman.)

Antarctic ice melting from below, finds study — Ice loss in Antarctica is largely driven by warm ocean currents, a discovery that could lead to more accurate predictions of sea level rise. Must be scuba diving liberals with blow torches. Everyone knows climate change is a fraud, no matter what the evidence says.

‘Spiritual’ young people more likely to commit crimes than ‘religious’ ones — Which is why atheists are one of the most distrusted groups in America. No, wait, what…? (Thanks to shsilver.)

California Prepares for Fallout as High Court Ruling on Prop. 8 Nears — Prop 8 is institutionalized bigotry driven in large part by funding from the Mormon Church, which has joined the Catholic Church as an example of total failure of moral leadership and social conscience because of that. It would be very nice to see Utah’s exported religiously-branded hate run back out of California.

[Iowa GOP governor] Terry Branstad May Need To Approve Medicaid Abortion Funding — Yes. Every single one of them. Because one thing conservatives believe absolutely is that the government shouldn’t come between you and your doctor. Which is what makes Obamacare evil and government oversight of abortions good… that much-vaunted conservative intellectual consistency. You know how much Republicans hate those situational ethics. (Via scarlettina.)

GOP congressman Trent Franks: It’s hard to get pregnant from rape — Republicans apparently cannot keep themselves from being both vile and stupid on this topic.

QotD?: Force choke or Vulcan nerve pinch?

6/14/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (too many errands, not enough time)
Hours slept: 5.75 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 246.8
Number of FEMA troops on my block leaking intelligence secrets: 0
Currently reading: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program by Sharon Salzberg; Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Art, Books, climate, Cool, Culture, gay, gender, Kalimpura, law, Links, nature, Personal, Politics, Process, Publishing, reviews, Science, Tech, weird, Writing

Posted: 5:36 am Fri June 14 2013 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad for a JayFest Thursday

Altitude May Influence Language Sounds — The lower air pressure at high altitudes may be a factor in why ejective consonants are more popular in languages spoken higher up.

What Will Humans Look Like in 100,000 Years? Here’s a Guess — Callista Flockhart, apparently. And white, totes white.

Paper Dolls: 1960s TV Stars — For all your retro needs.

Virus That Evolved in the Lab Delivers Gene Therapy into the Retina

Does the Big Bang necessarily mean we’re part of a multiverse?

Mapping Color Names — Oooh. Cool.

The Surprising History and Science of Tear Gas

The lost city of Heracleion — Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

New York’s Sea-Level Plan: Will It Play in Miami? — Once again I am reminded that there is no objective reason for climate change to be a partisan issue. Just reflexive conservative hatred of anything liberals care about, as well as the usual GOP contrarianism, in play over what in retrospect will prove to be the biggest and costliest mistake in the history of human civilization.

To Stop Being the Party of Stupid You Must Stop Being Stupid — If you are not around people who will look at you like you are crazy when you make stupid claims about other people’s experiences, then you tend to keep saying stupid things about other people’s experiences. It is not enough to pay a political price, or even to be shamed into silence. You have to come to believe — in your heart — that sincerity itself is not the same as accurate information. That’s the awesome socially engineered glory of the conservative media echo chamber: epistemic closure that keeps its followers from ever needing to question themselves or examine any evidence that contradicts their cherished worldview. As a political strategy, it has been brilliant. As a cultural strategy, it is profoundly toxic and counterproductive, even to conservative interests.

QotD?: What did you do with that book?

6/13/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (too many errands, not enough time)
Hours slept: 4.75 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 246.4
Number of FEMA troops on my block leaking intelligence secrets: 0
Currently reading: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program by Sharon Salzberg; Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Tags: climate, Cool, Culture, healthcare, Language, Links, nature, Personal, Photos, Politics, Science, Tech, weird

Posted: 4:36 am Thu June 13 2013 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad wishes its parents a happy anniversary

What Makes Fiction Good? It’s Mostly the Voice — Ta-Nehisi Coates on reading Slaughterhouse Five.

A Glamorous Killer Returns — Cougars in the east.

Marks on Martian Dunes May Reveal Tracks of Dry Ice Sleds — Calvin and Hobbes go to Mars?

New phylum of bacteria found lurking in hospital sink’s drain — Its genome hints that it may live inside some other organism. Don’t wash your hands!

Slaying the Zombie Ideas of Climate Change Denial — These are ideas that cannot be killed, no matter how thoroughly they are debunked. They always rise to shamble again, reanimated by the deniosphere. “The hockey stick is broken,” “the world hasn’t warmed in 16 years,” “Antarctic ice is growing.” These ideas are all wrong, demonstrably so, but they are still walking the countryside, looking to eat innocent people’s brains. Good luck with that so long as conservatives continue to have political and cultural credibility.

Parents to hear evidence in 2 faith-healing deaths — Child abuse and neglect are not First Amendment rights, no matter how sincerely held your personsal beliefs might be. It’s extreme cases like this which highlight the fact that religion does not belong in the public square in a free and democratic society.

If work is a responsibility, then work is also a right — Slacktivist Fred Clark deconstructs yet another piece of pointless and cruel Christianist political lunacy.

Prostitution, drugs alleged in State Department memo — Hmm. A lot of people are out to get Mrs. Clinton these days. Wonder what they’re scared of?

The Top 1% of U.S. Income Earners Receive 15% of Tax Breaks and Credits — People complain about government payments to the poor, but tax breaks are also payments, though less obviously so, to the rich. And those tax breaks cost the government a lot more money.

QotD?: Got celebration?

6/12/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (too many errands, not enough time)
Hours slept: 6.75 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 246.2
Number of FEMA troops on my block leaking intelligence secrets: 0
Currently reading: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program by Sharon Salzberg; Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Tags: Books, Christianists, climate, healthcare, Links, Mars, nature, Personal, Politics, Process, Religion, Science, Writing

Posted: 5:11 am Wed June 12 2013 | Comments(6) |

[links] Link salad has ninety-nine problems

The Inkhorn Controversy — Ah, lexical change. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Simple theory may explain mysterious dark matter, physicists say — One physicist says he likes this theory because of “its simplicity, uniqueness and the fact that it can be tested.”

So What Do Women Want? — Interesting commentary on female sexuality and socialization from Feminist Mormon Housewives.

TSA Questions Chewbacca’s Lightsaber — Because safety!

Government Secrets and the Need for Whistle-blowers — Some rather well-informed comment. (Via David Goldman.)

Anti-Imperialism and Conservatives — Rapping about Grover Cleveland. Now that is some old school politics.

Masters of Austerity and Deregulation: Dennis Lehane and Does the Tea Party GOP Want Another Molasses Disaster? — Speaking of old school. (Via Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

QotD?: Which problem ain’t one for you?

6/11/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.5 hours (WRPA)
Hours slept: 6.5 hours (fitful)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 247.4
Number of FEMA troops on my block creating tornadoes for political distraction: 0
Currently reading: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program by Sharon Salzberg

Tags: gender, history, Language, Links, Personal, Politics, Science, Travel

Posted: 4:46 am Tue June 11 2013 | Comments(5) |

[links] Link salad hears the voice of reason, disregards

Iain Banks dies of cancer aged 59 — Author Iain Banks has died aged 59, two months after announcing he had terminal cancer, his family has said. Sigh.

An oil painting of Green — By artist Lindsey Look. This is cool.

Jade de Jay Lake — An apparently favorable review of the French translation of Green.

Almost All the Way Home From the Stars is now available as a trade paperback — Collaborative fiction from me and specficrider.

Unpacking the “Real Writers Have Talent” Myth — Yup. This. I’ve said for years you need some combination of talent, persistence and luck-facilitated-through-professionalism, but you don’t need all three. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

What Game of Thrones Season 3 Did Better — And Worse — Than the Book

Vintage Buses — Ooh. Though when it comes to buses, I always wanted one of these.

Human-scale invisibility cloak unveiled — I see what they did there, with that headline.

100 years after ore boat disappeared in Lake Superior storm, searchers locate wreck

Department of Unusual Ordnance Finds — Huh. Increment charges. Who knew? (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Old Opportunity Mars rover makes rock discovery — Ah, clay.

Waiting on new climate deal ‘will set world on a path to 5C warming’ — International Energy Agency chief economist says rising emissions make limiting increase to 2C ‘extremely challenging’ As always, the real world doesn’t conform to conservative ideology. History will be baffled that one country’s minority political party whose ideology is based on blatant and knowing counterfactuals managed to hold the entire word hostage and cause trillions of dollars worth of damage in the process.

Biblical Marriage Not Defined Simply As One Man, One Woman: Iowa Religious Scholars’ Op-Ed — “The debate about marriage equality often centers, however discretely, on an appeal to the Bible,” the authors wrote. “Unfortunately, such appeals often reflect a lack of biblical literacy on the part of those who use that complex collection of texts as an authority to enact modern social policy.” That’s the Republican party sorted right there. Too bad no one in conservative circles ever listens to reality-based messages like this.

Civil Disobedience on a Turkish Game Show — That is some serious courage. (Via danjite.)

I’m Not A Conservative And You Shouldn’t Be One Either — What if the problem with your political party is that the policies it advocates are bad? You can’t fix that problem by “rebranding” the same platform or finding younger, less-white candidates to promote it. You definitely can’t fix it by leaning into your failed policies and becoming more extreme.

Its the Corporations, Stupid: Why we are 2nd Amendment Fundamentalists but the 4th Amendment doesn’t Count — Actually, it’s the conservatives, who will hold the line on the 2nd Amendment no matter how many tens of thousands of people die every year, but otherwise believe you can’t use your civil liberties if you’re dead, and are willing to legislate away the entire rest of the Bill of Rights for fear of Muslims in America’s bathroom.

QotD?: Got any good advice?

6/10/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.75 hours (WRPA)
Hours slept: 6.5 hours (interrupted)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 246.8
Number of FEMA troops on my block creating tornados for political distraction: 0
Currently reading: Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program by Sharon Salzberg

Tags: Art, Books, Cancer, cars, Christianists, climate, Cool, economy, Links, Mars, media, Personal, Politics, Process, Religion, reviews, Science, stories, Tech, weird, Writing

Posted: 4:47 am Mon June 10 2013 | Comments(1) |