Bookity

• New releases: Smart Bitches (romance)
• Linkity from Smart Bitches.
• Linkity from Book Riot.
• Linkity from the Pen Addict.
• “Hamlet adaptation where Hamlet is a vlogger and all his soliloquies are breakdowns he uploads to YouTube.”
• “Tingle just cranked out 50k words for a spite story for JKR and I am LIVING for it!”
• Some Terry Pratchett quotes on policing from Discworld.
• 2015 comics anthology called APB: Artists against Police Brutality.
• The Hate U Give may be available to watch for free on your favorite streaming service.
• Read the next book (a collection of essays) for the One Book, One Minnesota bookclub – A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota.

Think, Do, Make, Learn

• On imagination.
• Lake Baikal is kind of terrifying. Also, it apparently contains 22-23% of the world’s fresh surface water.
• Hannah Gadsby with a message for anti-vaxxers.
• Street art in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
• Sir Patrick Stewart on Sesame Street.
• “How to help your memory when stress is taking its toll”.
• “Learn the history of Juneteenth in two minutes”.
• “Why Juneteenth should be a national holiday”.
• Good quote about bigotry.
• A note to white allies.
• Zoom is adding end-to-end encryption to its free service.
• How to block political ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Life in These Pandemic Times

• That 2020 mood. Oh, yes.
• Humor?
• Disaster fatigue… yeah.
• That’s one way to keep your glasses from fogging over when wearing a mask…
• “Study: 100% face mask use could crush second, third COVID-19 wave”.
• Track your state’s R naught.
• “Enroll in a free online course on contact tracing through Johns Hopkins”.
• “Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book: Classic SF about pandemics explores faith in both science and spirituality”.
• Linkity from kmkat. And more.

Cookity

• Sausage-stuffed spaghetti squash.
• Broccoli and cheese spaghetti squash casserole.
• Spaghetti squash chicken parmesan skillet dinner. Huh, must be spaghetti squash week at The Kitchn… but is spaghetti squash even in season?!

Gluten Free

• Brownie ice cream sandwiches.
• Pretzel rolls.

Artsy Crafty

• Getting started with gel plate printing.
• Knitting linkity from kmkat.

Cool

• A black cat demonstrates how to assemble a shipping box.
• Yes, please.
• A “favorite whimsical trait of humanity’s”.

Cool or Wha…?

• Edible notebooks and coffee-flavored pens.

Wha…?

• Well, it’s good to know Facebook has a limit – I was starting to wonder. My ???? is that the ads even exist. UGH.
• “The Segway’s inventor wants to mass-produce human organs”.

LOL

• “King Arthur was supposed to rise when the world’s need was greatest…”

Reading Update
Mostly doomsurfing, but I’ve read some fanfic – and even some new fanfic (vs rereading, which I have been doing A LOT).

“If I don’t make eye contact, Mom won’t remove me from this kitty perch she claims is a ‘paper trimmer’!” -Mayhem, incorrectly

A few lighter things at the beginning and end, but the middle is fierce.

• Linkity from Smart Bitches. Cover snark from Smart Bitches.
• JK Rowling FAIL. Thank you, Dan Rad, for being a Very Good Human.
• “David Tennant as Thermos flasks”.
• “Chronicles of Narnia if Lucy had a sword”.
• Historically themed tracksuits.
• Neural network paint colors.
• “Ongoing community aid efforts in the Twin Cities”. A digital album you can buy, “with proceeds going to benefit black-owned businesses and Native youth in Minneapolis”.
• “Why this started in Minneapolis”.
• “The cities taking up calls to defund the police”.
• “A timeline of US police protests”.
• Protest murals in Minneapolis.
• “The voices behind the clash at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette“.
• Spoken-word poem about white privilege. (via Book Riot)
• Quick little zine summarizing what white fragility is.
• Resource post for white people interested in becoming antiracist.
• Free syllabus “that addresses institutionalized racism in the US”.
• “Just a small reminder. Black art does not exist solely to educate non-Black people. Always be expanding your horizons.”
• Protest art on tRUMP’s White House wall.
• Beware of activism burnout.
• “Looting is the ultimate strike against a system that deems mass-produced objects to be far more precious than life itself.”
• “The FBI has quietly investigated white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement”. Help for you to evaluate the Intercept as a source.
• BOOM. And BOOM.
• About Bruce Springsteen’s song “American Skin”. Listen to the song.
• The movie THE HATE U GIVE is streaming free most places.
• Linkity from Bookwyrm Knits.
• Linkity from kmkat. And more. And more. And more.
• Make a mask that filters more than an N95. (via alexwhitehall)
• And that was just January…
• I mean, really.

Cats on my purple cat sheets, right underneath the ceiling fan!

It’s going to be a rollicking ride here, folks. Hold on to yer hats. Which you’re probably already doing, because this has been A Week. Heavier stuff down toward the end.

• New releases: Tor.com (YA SFF, fantasy, SF) (plus info about Tor’s virtual books convention), Smart Bitches (romance), AAR (romance)
• Good Omens won a Nebula! 90+ people cosplaying Good Omens.
• Expounding on a “throwaway line” from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Expounding on the concept of the Goblet of Fire.
• On owning a mini-sphinx.
• Pockets and Star Trek.
• That would be a pretty cool film.
• “10 DIY bookstand ideas”.
• “Criterion Channel lifts paywall on films by black filmmakers in support of Black Lives Matter”.
• “How to make this moment the turning point for real change” by President Barack Obama.
• “The myth of ‘official’: Autism and self-diagnosis skeptics”.
• Golden moles.
• “What happens to our brains when we read?”
• Rotary dial cellphone.
• Agreed – you put that back NOW.
• So cute! Also very cute!
• GF potstickers.
• One pot 20-minute coconut chickpea curry.
• Knitting linkity from kmkat. More linkity from kmkat.
• Carcinization. Hover your cursor or long-press for caption.
• SERIOUSLY.
• Oh, yeah.
• It’s true.
• Goodbye, Uncle Hugo’s and Uncle Edgar’s. From Science Times. From Locus.
• Some pictures of my neighborhood Sunday. The list of buildings damaged, looted, or destroyed in the Twin Cities.
• “Engage, educate, donate, and support: Ways you can help” from Smart Bitches.
• The Sesame Street and CNN Town Hall on Racism.
• Ben & Jerry are NOT f*cking around.
• “How cities offload the cost of police brutality”.
• “The racial injustice of American highways”.
• “America’s cities were designed to oppress”.
• “Turns out the only person attempting voter fraud is Donald tRUMP”.
• Visual confirming that yes, masks DO make a difference.
• “What to expect as you return to auto shops”.
• “What it feels like to be working in customer service right now” (dark humor).

“I’m not sure why you say this is a ‘paper trimmer’, Mom, when it’s obviously a cat perch!” -Mayhem

Things are darker and sadder here in Minneapolis this week and because my heart is pretty heavy (but we are safe), this will be one of those whirlwind type linkities.

• Toad Words.
• Discworld meets Harry Potter.
• God playing celestial DnD, Good Omens style.
• A simple way to improve the first line of any story.
• Linkity from Smart Bitches. Cover snark from Smart Bitches.
• A quote from Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut on the American poor.
• “You don’t always know who is high risk”. THIS. SO MUCH THIS.
• The first paragraph is GLORIOUS.
• BOOM.
• “The risks – know them – avoid them”.
• “How to safely travel on mass transit during coronavirus”.
• You can hardly tell this 102 years old. Or that this is 355 years old.
• This grocery store knows what’s up.
• …well, I guess!
• “The toxic intersection of racism and public space”.
• On gargoyles.
• Some cursed Tuatara facts.
• Some differences between birds with the same name on different continents.
• There’s something weirdly fascinating about these dresses made from butterfly-patterned fabrics.
• “Our cat is obsessed with blanket forts…” Another cat being cute and amusing.
• Minneapolis Sculpture Garden from above.
• Penguins in the forest.
• Some Australia humour.
• “…hand-knitted human-activated coral blanket”.
• NIGHTMARE GHOUL TREE.
• “Intensely chocolate” Black Forest cake.
• Spring linkity from bookwyrm-knits.
• COVID-19 (and more) linkity from kmkat. And more. Knitting linkity. Silly linkity.

“Sun warm. Basket comfortable. Life good.” -Mayhem

Mayhem turned 14 on Wednesday! 😮