Facts About Fiction

Posted on June 22, 2023 by JE

Studies show that most studies don’t show what they show. Still, this is an interesting and well-sourced piece about the connections between reading and empathy.

https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/reading-fiction-empathy-better-person/

screenshot of the article at Big Think
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Just Be Cos

Posted on June 21, 2023 by JE

Typo of the day is cosgender which I discovered by mistyping cisgender in some sentence like “Cisgenger is not a slur”—a statement too obvious to need saying, except that we live in the Worst Timeline.

“Cosgender. That ought to be a real thing!” I said to myself, and apparently it is.

“Cosgender is a fluid gender that changes depending on the character(s) one is cosplaying at the moment. For example, cosplaying a female character could make one’s gender more female-aligned, and cosplaying a male character could make one’s gender more male-aligned.”

Fandom.com

It even has its own flag, created by the term’s neologizer “Mogaiz-Heaven”.

flag for cosgender

So. There you go there. It’s a Solstice Miracle!™

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Opporknockity Tunes!

Posted on June 21, 2023 by JE

Every time anything goes right today, I’m shouting, “IT’S A SOLSTICE MIRACLE!” I urge everyone to do the same, until it’s a thing people start to complain about. Then we can raise money talking about the War on Solstice. It’s a long con, but it just might work.

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The Living Is Easy

Posted on June 21, 2023 by JE

Happy solstice to my fellow Tellurians. All visitors: proceed at your own risk.

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Potayto, Potahto…

Posted on June 18, 2023 by JE

Typo of the day is eggshites (where I intended to type eggwhites).

I’m thinking of letting it stand. Since Mr. Pancreas tried to kill me last winter, I’ve come to appreciate eggwhites, but my narrator doesn’t think much of them.

a carton of generic egg whites
Don’t try to drink it all at once!
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Slay Ride

Posted on June 14, 2023 by JE

The latest round of student papers gave me a chance to use one of my favorite cut-and-paste comments.

The principal parts of this verb are: slay, slew, slain.

“Bob slays monsters. Joan slew monsters. Hey, all my monsters have been slain!”

Tenniel's illustration for Lewis Carroll's JABBERWOCKY
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?“
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To Werror Is Human…

Posted on June 14, 2023 by JE

Typo of the day is werror (where I intended to type error).

I figure a werror must be some kind of mutant werewolf produced by an experiment gone horribly wrong.

“They were neither human nor wolf! You will never escape from the terror of The Werrors!”

still from YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN Frederick asks, "Werewolf?" Igor answers, "There."
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Serifer Madness

Posted on June 12, 2023 by JE

I know lots of people love the sans-serif type of font, but I hate its guts because it elides a significant distinction, between lower case L and upper case I, both appearing as the same glyph. For highly literate people dealing with their own language, this isn’t normally a problem, but change either one of those prerequisites and there are problems–ones that are wholly unnecessary, created by the ambiguity of the font itself.

This has been another episode of “Things Only I Get Mad About”.

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Foreshadows of Hanuvar

Posted on June 9, 2023 by JE

Aya Katz talks with Howard Andrew Jones about LORD OF A SHATTERED LAND, his great book coming out soon from Baen.

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“Numberless Are the World’s Wonders…”: Clifford Simak’s CITY

Posted on June 8, 2023 by JE

Here’s Davis Meltzer’s cover for the 1970s-era Ace edition of Clifford Simak’s City, an early entry onto my “Always Reread” list.

via @70sscifi

I disliked this cover when I was a kid because of the anthropoid greenmetal skull with human teeth. Now I think it’s great. It has all the essential elements of the book (hyper-intelligent & hyper-friendly dogs, robots that are more human than most human beings, antagonistic super-ants, uncounted parallel Earths, space travel, the hauntingly empty Webster House) all of them contained inside the robotic head and heart of Jenkins, a minor character who becomes the protagonist of the series deep in the posthuman future.

The book is an indisputable classic of midcentury science fiction, but it’s probably the hardest sell of any book that deserves that description.

Continue reading →
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