Cities and Citizenship: Anti-Graffiti, Part 1: Aesthetics – An interesting take on the aesthetics of the anti-graffiti movement, and how it often co-opts graffiti to its own ends. Lots of interesting example pics from Sydney. Revising The Revisionists – Excellent article about the 1898 armed coup and massacre of black residents of Wilmington, North Carolina. Reminds me of the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me”, and of course Australia’s own “history wars”. The Strongest Woman In America Lives In Poverty – This top weightlifter, on Continue reading → [Contains spoilers for Anathem, if anyone cares.] I’m going through two intensely frustrating things at present: The end of my first semester of sound engineering school, and Reading Neal Stephenson’s Anathem School: it’s TAFE, which means no exams worth mentioning, and they really don’t want to fail anyone if they can help it. That means the assessment tasks aren’t too difficult, and in many cases we finish them long before the end of semester so that there’s time for marking, resubmission, late submission, or whatever. Continue reading → So, I finally discovered a website that will let me sell t-shirts that I would actually want to wear *. At long last, I can act upon all my suppressed t-shirt-making urges! First up, and as a sort of trial run, I offer you the I-wish-I-could-have-been-at-Wiscon t-shirt: If there were a superstar rock band of classic feminist science fiction and fantasy, the members would be Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, James Tiptree, Jr. (alias Alice Sheldon), and Ursula K. Le Guin. These t-shirts are 100% organic Continue reading → Ravelry API – Wait, what? How did I miss this. Ravelry has an API now, and they’ve been using it internally since Feb 2012, so it isn’t just an unloved add-on. (You probably can’t follow the link, which is to the Rav API forum, unless you’re a member. But anyone who might be interested in this probably is already, so…) Our real first gay president – Newsweek says Obama’s the US’s “first gay president”, ignoring James Buchanan, who was openly gay in the 19th century. Continue reading →