Friday, April 15, 2016

Weekend Reading: The Busy Season Edition

I think it is time to admit that I'm in a busy season, both personally and professionally. We're past Pumpkin's birthday now, but the end of the school year is going to come up surprisingly fast, and with it, our family vacation to New Zealand and the Cook Islands, which I need to start planning.

I've had several networking events recently, not to mention the Bindercon conference in LA. I've been working more hours than I anticipated at my main gig (which I am most definitely NOT complaining about: that's my major source of income). I have three books in flight, all of which are coming along nicely, but still require attention.

And of course, I'm about to fly up to Portland, for a trip that is mostly personal but has some professional bits tacked on. My husband has no problem running the home show on his own, but to be fair to him and the kids, each trip out of town requires at least a little extra planning on my part. For instance, I made scones today so that the kids would have their usual lunch at the beginning of next week. Did I have to do that? No. The kids could eat something different. But I've been gone more than usual of late, so I wanted to do that for them.

In my experience, busy seasons exist not so much because there is so much I absolutely have to do, but because there is an unusual concentration of things I want to do.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. You're here for things to read this weekend, and I have some links for you.

First up, the Whitney Plantation museum looks like a place we should all try to visit.

We need to stop holding girls and women responsible for the behavior of boys and men. Also, grown men who are creeping on teenage girls that they teach aren't going to stop just because the girls are wearing longer skirts.

Amanda Taub lays out the reason that the utterly unsurprising results of the Guardian's study of their comments section is so disturbing. The fact that women and people of color take the most abuse and the way that abuse correlates with the topics they cover is almost certainly limiting whose voices we get to read on some topics.

Maura Qunit's How to Negotiate a Raise (If You're a Woman) is definitely funny, and definitely sad. It ties in to what I've been thinking lately about my career goals. My current career goal is to build a satisfying and reasonably rewarding career in which I can go for an entire week without having to hold back an urge to scream at someone. I plan to achieve this via a combination of changing what sort of work I do and learning to be more zen.

Do you remember hearing legislators poking fun at "shrimp fight club" and shrimp on a treadmill? Well, the scientists whose work was singled out for ridicule held a poster session. Surprise! None of it is ridiculous.

Sometimes Farm to Table is just a nice story someone is telling you to make you feel good (and buy their food). I wonder about regional variation in this sort of fabrication. I mean, farm to table is all well and good when you live somewhere with a year round growing season, but it is a trend in a lot of places that don't have that. Does that influence this sort of fabrication?

Ending with some happy things:

I really like the idea of this sculpture. More genrerally, I like the idea of sculptures that you can interact with like that.

This tumblr of Classic Programmer Paintings makes me laugh.

And I'm going to leave it there, because I told my kids I'd pick them up a little early today, so we could hang out a bit before I have to leave.

Happy weekend!

1 comment:

  1. On the farm to table issue, Troy Johnson wrote a nice article about it going in in San Diego, he decided not to call anyone out but I hear Suzies farm are struggling because of this.

    ReplyDelete

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