Jay Lake: Writer

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[links] Link salad is a jelly donut

Cliches and other chatter keeps our minds from thinkingLisa 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 IDsMuscle 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 [info]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

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[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 [info]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 HomosexualityGenerally, 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

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[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 [info]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 chargeNew 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 ObamacareLast 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 [info]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

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[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 fatContent 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

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[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 [info]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 studyIce 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 [info]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 [info]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

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[links] Link salad for a JayFest Thursday

Altitude May Influence Language SoundsThe 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 StupidIf 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

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

Iain Banks dies of cancer aged 59Author 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 [info]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 [info]danjite.)

I’m Not A Conservative And You Shouldn’t Be One EitherWhat 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

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[links] Link salad asks where did you come from, where did you go?

Waving My Tweak Flag High — On the process of revision. (Thanks to David Goldman.)

Timbuktu Libraries in ExileHelp us preserve a global cultural heritage from imminent loss and become part of the great learning adventure of Timbuktu. Fundraising for a profoundly worthy cause. (Via [info]threeoutside.)

Looking It in the Face — On aging and death… (Via David Wilford.)

What Is Capuling? ‘Everyday I’m Çapuling’ Turkish Protest Video Goes Viral — Language and culture in motion. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Most European males ‘descended from farmers’Most men in Europe can trace a line of descent to early farmers who migrated from the Near East, a study says. Why is this surprising? (Via my Dad.)

Museum Bares All For Cycle ExhibitionClothing is optional, of course. Riders will be charged one dollar admission for each item they wear. Portland Police recommend all cyclists wear a helmet, at the bare minimum. Ah, Portland.

Physics’s pangolinTrying to resolve the stubborn paradoxes of their field, physicists craft ever more mind-boggling visions of reality. Interesting stuff. (Via AH.)

Mars rover Opportunity finds traces of ‘drinkable’ water

Atomic bomb tests confirm formation of new brain cellsNewly created neurons marked with isotopes from bomb tests. Because Science!

Contact Lens Computer: Like Google Glass, without the Glasses — Finally, retinal displays!

West Texas Oilfield Town Runs Out of Water — All those rural liberals in West Texas are just contributing to the climate change conspiracy.

4-year-old boy accidentally kills dad in Arizona — Because guns make us all safer. Just ask the 30,000 people killed in the United States every year by firearms. If you’re confused, the NRA and the GOP can explain.

Response to an Open Letter — Hal Duncan speaks brilliantly to wounded, self-valorizing Christian privilege from an atheist (and nonheteronormative) perspective.

If I Were a Black Kid… — Ta-Nehisi Coates on education. Though he’s speaking specifically of black youth, some of his comments are spot on for kids in any enclosed community, such as Christian homeschoolers or small towns.

#GOPHeartsLadies (video)A great video from Emily’s Lists, titled #GOPHeartsLadies, walking us through the offensive things Republicans have said about women in just the past seven days. And Republicans wonder why they have a demographic problem. They just can’t stop longing for the days of white, male, dominance.

QotD?: What the heck did cotton-eyed Joe ever do to you?


6/8/2013
Writing time yesterday: 2.75 hours (revisions to “Rock of Ages”)
Hours slept: 6.5 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.5 hours (stationary bike)
Weight: 247.9
Number of FEMA troops on my block creating tornados for political distraction: 0
Currently reading: Making Money by Terry Pratchett

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[links] Link salad wakes up way too early and flies home

Well-known tumor supressor has a surprise double role: Killing cancer cellsAn alternate protein is taken up by other cells, in some cases killing them. (Via Michael Fay.)

World’s Oldest Human Tumor Discovered – Over 120,000 Years Old

The Visual Patterns of Audio Frequencies Seen through Vibrating Sand — (Via [info]threeoutside.)

A Password So Secret, You Don’t Consciously Know ItResearchers work to develop passwords so secret that only your unconscious mind knows them.

Marriage is Over: “Live With It” — Fascinating.

5 Surprising Drone Uses (Besides Pizza Delivery)

Squadron Leader J A F MacLachlan, the one-armed Commanding Officer of No 1 Squadron RAF, standing beside his all-black Hawker Hurricane Mark IIC night fighter — Heck of a story here.

WWII Drug: The German Granddaddy of Crystal MethCrystal meth is notorious for being highly addictive and ravaging countless communities. But few know that the drug can be traced back to Nazi Germany, where it first became popular as a way to keep pilots and soldiers alert in battle during World War II. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Preventing Pearl HarborScrivener’s Error with a detailed analysis of the current government surveillance scandal.

NSA-Verizon Surveillance: Welcome to the United States of Total Information Awareness — Juan Cole on the same.

Yeah, About Benghazi — There is no scandal there, assuming you live in the real world. Which the GOP demonstrably does not. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

QotD?: Where will you go today?


6/7/2013
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (Birthday busy-ness)
Hours slept: 5.25 hours (interrupted)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (feet hurt)
Weight: n/a (traveling)
Number of FEMA troops on my block creating tornados for political distraction: 0
Currently reading: Making Money by Terry Pratchett

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[links] Link salad says Happy Birthday to me

Coming Soon: “Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction” — A project of which I was a part. I provided the chapter on steampunk. Unfortunately, I did not inquire as to the stable of my co-authors.

Jay Lake and Austin Sirkin in ConversationLocus with a podcast recorded last spring at ICFA. We talk steampunk, mostly.

We are here to protect you. We are here to protect you from the terrible secret of Seanans.[info]seanan_mcguire on (among other things) our current WIP collaboration.

Think SimilarRhetoricians call switching a word from one part of speech to another “anthimeria”. (Via Daily Idioms, Annotated.)

Book Domino Chain World Record — Oh, this is so cute. (Thanks to [info]threeoutside.)

There Are Whales Alive Today Who Were Born Before Moby Dick Was Written — (Thanks to [info]threeoutside.)

On Being an OctopusDiving Deep in Search of the Human Mind. (Thanks to AH.)

Fresh-Squeezed: 1951 — Mmm. Oranges.

What We Think Martians Look Like: Photos — Some classic images.

New Science of Cosmography Reveals 3-D Map of the Local Universe

Chester E. McDuffee’s patented diving suit (1911) — Wow. And a cool site it’s on, too. (Thanks to David E. Vincent.)

First “Small Modular” Nuclear Reactors Planned for Tennessee

Helicopter Operated By Pure Mind Control

Invisibility ‘time cloak’ developed

Can “Infinite Variation” Be Mass-Produced Using 3-D Printing?Shapeways looks to software to bring down production costs and time to market in its 3-D printing factory in New York City.

Rep. Marc Veasey condemns racist remarks by Dallas Republican activist“I’m going to be real honest with you, the Republican Party doesn’t want black people to vote if they’re going to vote 9-to-1 for Democrats,” [Tea Party Republican] Ken Emanuelson said. Are you proud of your Republican Party?

IMF ‘to admit mistakes’ in handling Greek debt crisis and bailout — Wait? What? Austerity isn’t the answer to everything? Clearly we need more tax cuts!

“Yes Virginia, There Are Death Panels”: Limbaugh Exploits Child Transplant Patient To Revive Obamacare Myth — Because conservatives lie. Constantly and knowingly. That’s what happens when truth and reality aren’t ever on your side.

Obama says GOP obstruction of nominations is ‘unprecedented.’ What if he’s right?Republicans deny that their obstructionism is unprecedented. As it happens, though, there is a set of actual facts we can look at to try to determine who is right.

QotD?: When is your birthday?


6/6/2013
Writing time yesterday: 2.25 hours (WRPA editing and revising “Hook Agonistes”)
Hours slept: 6.75 hours (solid)
Body movement: 0.0 hours (feet hurt)
Weight: n/a (traveling)
Number of FEMA troops on my block creating tornados for political distraction: 0
Currently reading: Making Money by Terry Pratchett

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