Friday, January 01, 2016

Weekend Reading: The New Year Edition

Happy New Year, everyone!

Since I skipped my links post last week, I thought I should do one this week to catch up. But somehow it is already after 5, and I need to go make dinner soon... so we'll just see how this goes. You may get more catch up links next week.

First of all, if you missed me tweeting and writing about the fact that Annorlunda Books is having a "Fill Your eReader" sale in which the ebook versions of all titles are just $0.99- go read about it now. That sale includes the job search book I wrote, so if a non-academic job search is in your plans for 2016, now is a great time to grab a copy of that book.

Let's start the new year on a happy note with a few things I loved:

The 2015 White House photo wrap up.

Aretha Franklin singing for Carole King at The Kennedy Center Honors concert.

Gina Rodriguez speaking to Rita Moreno at the same event.

Let's  move on to things people wrote that I really liked, and that made me think:

This post from Sady Doyle about liking Hillary Clinton. My feelings about Clinton are more mixed, but I found myself nodding along to a lot of things in that post.

This piece from Jess Zimmerman about parody Twitter accounts. I follow @SwiftonSecurity at my real name account and her tweets are great.

The Language: A Feminist Guide blog  had a great year end wrap up of sexism in language/speaking.

This piece from Josh Bernstein about how the GamerGate/4chan/MRA stuff is forming into a counterculture. Sticking with the geek culture bit of that for a minute, Laurie Penny and Damien Walter both have some really good things to say on the subject.

The decision by the grand jury not to indict the officer who shot Tamir Rice led to two very good pieces about what this is doing to our justice system. Jamelle Bouie writes about requiring police to accept risk. Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about how it is delegitimizing policing. Conor Friedersdorf writes about how it makes him hesitant to call 911.

I've got more links people sent to me and that I bookmarked, but I'm running out of time. And I still need something happy to end on. Let's end with some StarWars: Carrie Fisher is awesome.

I agree:



Daisy Ridley has big shoes to fill. Luckily, it seems she is up to it. (Click all the way through to the Instagram)




And now, it is time to go make dinner....

3 comments:

  1. I like Hillary Clinton too. I think she is a pragmatist and a highly competent bureaucrat. People I know who have worked with her say that she cares a lot and has a big lump of personal responsibility (or, as they say in academia, public service motivation) and is very good at what she does (but they say she is unexciting and boring-- the bureaucrat's bureaucrat!).

    She may not have the soaring rhetoric of 2008 Obama or talk as socialist as Sanders, but I bet she will get more good legislation through than either of them could. (And I love Obama.) I really do believe she is the best option out there right now.

    And I hope that congress can somehow sneak pork barrel spending back into the rules so bipartisan legislation has a chance again. Apparently you need some pig fat to create legislation. Have I mentioned I'm a pragmatist?

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    1. My biggest concern about Hillary Clinton is that I remember how much some people hate her, and I'm afraid that will land us with a Republican president. And the current front runners on that side make me want to flee the country.

      That's a horrible, unfair thing to hold against her, but... I still worry. I'll probably vote for her in the primary, though.

      I've loved Obama as a president, too. I wish he'd had a more honorable opposition, and had the chance to govern up to his potential.

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    2. I suspect they hate Obama more, and he won against Mitt Romney in the last election.

      She's also managed to smooth out rough spots from 8 years ago and she's picked up a ton of what works for women. Obama did the right thing making her Secretary of State. I think she's gonna do ok (well, I suppose the DNC could still screw things up for her, but hopefully they're on notice). Those Sanders supporters will come around.

      Did you see the not-a-debate democratic candidates thing on PBS? All three of the candidates seemed really competent, especially coming off the heels of one of the Republican debates.

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