• On Life and Love

    Good reads

    It’s been a loooong time since I posted some good reading. 5 Things I Learned as the Internet’s Most Hated Person | Cracked.com "I watched every avenue of social media suddenly blow up with messages of abject hatred from thousands of strangers. For the first five days, I couldn't sleep. Every time I would start to doze off, I'd be shocked awake from half-asleep nightmares about everyone I love buying into the mob's bullshit and abandoning me. The ceaseless barrage of random people sending you disgusting shit is initially impossible to drown out — it was constant, loud, and it became my life." They Are Not Trolls. They Are Men.…

  • On Life and Love

    When Reading Drags

    I may have caved to an Online Reading Syndrome. I’m finding it increasingly hard to read some books, while I have no trouble reading various articles, blagoposts, stories, and graphical matter on the internet. Now, in my defense, I’m reading non-fiction, and that’s never been my strong suit, no matter how much the concept of the subject matter appeals. But still. I find myself feeling the flaws of books more acutely than I would in an online piece. For instance, Amartya Sen’s Identity and Violence. Excellent concept for a book:

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: Games, Books, and People

    This week’s internet cruising: EA takes games from Steam – Hilariously written, and found because I was eyeballing Dragon Age 2 to see if it still comes with Mass Effect, as it did once. …Not that I want DA2. I haven't finished the first one yet. Abortion may be legal, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get one – Includes numbers from a rather large sample-size survey that was done. Showcase of Inspiring Arabic Calligraphy Artworks – Just a compilation post, but gorgeous. Showed up on my news feed. Made me feel shocked,… | – Aw, hell no.

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: All Over the Place

    There’s no particular theme to this week’s surfing, but there are some pretty pictures and good reads here. The problem with waste – Note that the list of not-recommended screenings include things like screening for prostate cancer in men older than 75 or colon cancer in folks above 85. I glanced through the USPSTF's procedure manual, and it looks like they're taking into account a variety of factors (age, gender, race, etc.), but their information is only as good as the studies they're pulling from. How worried should we be about researchers' biases (ageism being the first that comes to mind)? "So we’re confronted with a set of screening recommendations…

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: Stockholm Trolls

    Um… it’ll make sense as you read. Amanda Hocking’s Blog: Some Things That Need to Be Said – From a successful self-published author: "This is literally years of work you're seeing. And hours and hours of work each day. The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting. I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that isn't writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies me." The Very Rich Indie Writer – Novelr – Making People Read – Looking at the example of Amanda Hocking's financial success, will authors of web fiction start to close…