Sakura

this is up there with the realisation i had years ago that red pandas are elves and raccoons are uruk-hai

while i am not an academic i did see this coming and post about it on bluesky, which is why i am quoted in this article

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

Where are all the "revoke Shamima Begum's citizenship she's a traitor people" today, I wonder.

performative reading, lack of reading skills, nobody's reading anymore -- NO!

tell me about a book that changed you

for me? the *extremely* ahistorical novel, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY which I read at 13 and was like, "Oh, art can be *everything* to a maker, for good and bad"

No more Black or trans staffers. No politics of any kind. The cowardice of mainstream media isn't just insulting, it's *boring.* Now TV is just like any other beauty rag. Why not just kill it quickly? Why the slow-motion pretense?

lol tell me you don't know any Indian people without telling me you don't know any Indian people

Watching Italian Tiktok and discovering that ‘questa trend è cringatissima’ and now I will be trying to make cringatissima into a proper non-italicized English word

Watching The Handmaid’s Tale and wondering how big is the gap between women and men’s reactions to it.

Sharing again today in honor of Virginia and her bravery. If you’ve been through something similar, please know you aren’t alone.

Study shows first evidence of sex differences in how pain can be produced New research from the Comprehensive Center for Pain & Addiction identified functional differences between males and females in the nerve cells that produce pain.

Yeah so you know how they mostly just… don’t test drugs on women because surely the cis male can stand in for all of humankind?

Yeah, turns out we literally have different pain setups, so painkillers designed for and tested on men are just less effective:

healthsciences.arizona.edu/news/release...

This Week's New Titles New titles available this week: Amateurs! by Joanna Walsh [book-strip index="1"] Buy a copy of Amateurs! and get 30% off any of the selected titles below. Discount will be applied in cart. Books must ...

We have three new titles out this week, including an exposé of the bleak realities of the transition to a carbon-neutral economy from @nicholasbeuret.bsky.social and a philosophical history of the internet by @badaude.bsky.social

This really is a roller coaster of a read. What at first appears to be a light-hearted tale of 1930s bohemian London goes on to encompass illness, destitution and tragic loss, but still finds room for comedy. A gem of a novel. My first by Barbara Comyns but not my last.

Currently comfort re-reading all of the Agent Pendergast mysteries. Can’t stop.

Jo Walton’s Reading List: September 2023 September was an excellent month, I was in Florence the whole time until right at the end when I flew to Chicago. I read eleven books, and it’s only now seeing them together as a list that I …

Jo Walton on SAINT: “Brilliant wonderful amazing fantasy novel … The experience of reading [it] is a little like having a mild fever …” www.tor.com/2023/10/04/j...

A quick message to new Blue Sky friends: We're entering the final week of our Short Story Prize submissions!

Closing date = Saturday 30 (midnight UK-time).

If you've a short story to share, we'd love to hear from you - and so would our amazing judges!

Full details: www.galleybeggar.co.uk/prize

Just moved in: Hi there!

... If you could share this and help us find our old (and hopefully some new) friends, we'd be very grateful.

The Age of the “Feminist ‘American Psycho'” Has Arrived The lack of women serial killers in fiction is often a source for 90s-style feminist outrage—an extreme version of “anything you can do, I can do better”—but the female serial killers t…

https://crimereads.com/the-age-of-the-feminist-american-psycho-has-arrived/

The Objects Wes Anderson Hoards in His New York Office An afternoon with the Asteroid City director in an apartment he describes as “not very well maintained” and “a bit abandoned.”

The Objects Wes Anderson Hoards in his New York Office | @vulture.bsky.social