October 18, 2018

Just a little (link) love: shocked cat edition

Just a little link love

Baby NZMuse has arrived (early!)!

Engineering conversation

Bidding adieu to Prudence Debtfree.

Don’t drink plane water!

How Netflix handled General Amaya’s character and her deafness

Are you indecisive? Trello collected some decision making wisdom.

Veronika’s hit the halfway mark on her student loans.

Likhain’s amazing Guest of Honor speech at Continuum. Read it for the stories.

Beautiful memories of a grandmother.

Stephonee pulled off a grand student debt repayment by credit card scheme. All details here.

Basic Economic Security in the United States: How Much Income Do Working Adults Need in Each State? This breakdown puts us in California as needing somewhere between $94,000-$106,000 per year. If we didn’t have to save at all then I suppose that might do it but I can’t comprehend a world in which I didn’t always need to save. Even when we’re no longer making income, I have trouble envisioning that future in which we just spend a limited income and don’t save actively. I’m so programmed.

This seems like a bad idea: “Nectome is a preserve-your-brain-and-upload-it company…For Nectome’s procedure to work, it’s essential that the brain be fresh. The company says its plan is to connect people with terminal illnesses to a heart-lung machine in order to pump its mix of scientific embalming chemicals into the big carotid arteries in their necks while they are still alive (though under general anesthesia).”

October 11, 2018

Just a little (link) love: Thanks, Cap edition

Just a little link love + small wins

Dog People vs. Cat People vs. Alligator Snapping Turtle People

The lynching of Mary Turner. The inhumanity in this country 100 years ago still burns strongly today.

Women are penalized for asking for more money, or penalized by being paid less when we don’t, but there’s a way to frame that question.

Travel packing for parents made me laugh. Except #1. Vaccinate your kids we shouldn’t still be having this conversation OMG.

Simple crafts I might actually do this year, thanks for the tutorial, Kristine! (The drawstring bags! I will make shoe and laundry bags for travel, they will live in our suitcase.)

I adore food prep posts like this from Frogdancer. I might not be able to do all the same kinds of prep but it gives me IDEAS. And I’d like tips on doing this sort of thing sustainably as well.

If you’re expecting, this is what worked and didn’t work for Crystal in their first three months of parenting.

Just as Hugh Jackman is Wolverine for me, a diehard Marvel fan of old, Chris Evans IS Captain America. I’m sad to know he’s done though I realize 8 years is a long time to be playing one character if you want to keep doing new and challenging things in your work. Thanks, Cap / Chris.

via GIPHY

Science Says Toxic Masculinity — More Than Alcohol — Leads To Sexual Assault: When a man feels entitled to assault someone, he may get drunk before he does it, but the decision to act was ultimately his alone.

Instead, current research suggests that prevention should focus on those perceptions and behaviors that did strongly predict assault. Although they’re often referred to in the literature as “personality variables,” they aren’t immutable characteristics any more than personality itself is immutable. “There’s a small number of sociopaths, but there’s a lot of it that’s cultural,” Testa said. In other words: Are these men supported by peers who also voice negative attitudes about women? Is it considered socially acceptable to look for the drunkest girl at a party and try to take her home? Are there social consequences for young men who ignore consent?

October 4, 2018

Just a little (link) love: Groff edition

Just a little link love + small wins

A VC who travels

African SFF and Afrofuturism have been here.

Padma Lakshmi understands why women wouldn’t report at the time. Most of us with souls understand.

Done by Forty’s FIRE journey

I love that Angela’s doing Women’s PF Wednesdays.

Teaching your kids about consent. (This last bit really really doesn’t work for JB though: “With parenting, something I heard is that when little kids are melting down—say, lashing out and generally being terrors—it means that they’re yearning for connection. So even if it goes against your instincts, what you can do is kneel down and give them a big hug.” If you want to see how fast a three year old can try and rip off your limbs, I have a model case right here. Hugs before ze is ready is a HUGE NO.)

A vital read for allies.

Queens of Infamy: Catherine de Medici

Are your kids addicted to television? Mine is a bit, obsessively asking me some weeks “is this a tv day?” but surprisingly, it doesn’t (so far) have the effect I was worried about. In a stunning indictment, though, JB told me one day that ze was going to pretend to be me. When I agreed, ze put on fake glasses and said BYE I GOING TO WORK. You don’t know me!

“Golf Digest to the rescue” ain’t peak 2018 but it’s definitely not a sentence I ever expected to type… For Valentino Dixon, a wrong righted

The price of relevance is fluency: “You see, there is no “Twitter mob”, there’s only people. And people shape culture, and culture evolves. But in the past, the powerful could keep themselves isolated from the way culture evolves, if they wanted to. Janet Jackson didn’t even know what Hot Cheetos are!

Groff

September 27, 2018

Just a little (link) love: Dragon Prince edition

Just a little link love + small wins

Early retirement in the olden days, from JD.

Gut-wrenching read – Henry (CW: baby and ependymoma).

FIRE: It’s not all tech bros here.

If I can’t convince someone that giving is a worthwhile endeavor in and of itself, and I’m forced to keep them in my life despite their being a terrible person because who doesn’t believe in caring about more than yourself (??), perhaps Matt would be more persuasive.

A MUST read from Piggy and Kitty: When Money is the Weapon: Understanding Intimate Partner Financial Abuse. It’s depressing how many of these forms of abuses I’ve witnessed happening to people I love and the kind of toll it takes on them.

I am sick to my stomach of all the people who are ok with how men and boys treat girls and women. I see you not speaking up. I see how you support this culture. GIRLS MATTER. And I am sick of the people in the comments section acting like the vast majority of rapes aren’t credible reports because of the rare false accusations out there. It just keeps on with the protect the boys narrative as if boys can’t be better than this, as if they can’t possibly be expected to take responsibility for their actions while the body count of their targets pile up. The only concern these people have is about the future of the boys while the people they actually hurt, by the thousands, are told they don’t matter:  Girls . . . are human. Girls are not there for the benefit of helping boys to turn into men. They are not there to be soiled and then tossed on the heap while boys go out and buy themselves a whole new look, a whole new life.

If you don’t want men to be dragged down by decades-old accusations of rape, then you need to crack down on minutes-old accusations of rape as they happen. But that’s not how it goes. Still, even now, that’s not how it goes.

Dragon Prince!

If you loved Avatar, this is worth trying out.

September 20, 2018

Just a little (link) love: SHE-RA edition

Just a little link love + small wins

Viola Davis, deeply talented.

Will kids make you happier? (I think the answer is pretty logical)

Someone would have to be living under a rock to genuinely ask: Why didn’t she say anything when it happened?

If I haven’t insisted on this before, you must read Cassandra Khaw’s Jaeger Aunties story.

Dogs missing their kids. Sera can’t stand that JB is gone at all day at school and just about jumps out of her skin when they come home. They don’t even hang out when we’re all home together but the dogs want us together anyway. They have a weird shepherding type of insistence about these things.

I appreciate bloggers who share their struggle hand in hand with their successes. I will always share my goofs, my ignorant mistakes, my silly mistakes, my resoundingly that was PREVENTABLE mistakes. That was 90% of years 2005-201…what was that, last year? Yeah, 2017. I should have a whole category of posts that are just labeled “mistakes”. This is incredibly important perspective. In that theme, Harmony shared their tough summer.

The research on materialism: “Children who recall that their parents just bought them stuff when they wanted it, or who paid them money or bought them things when they got good grades, there’s a very consistent association that when these things happen in childhood, when that person is an adult, they’re more likely to be materialistic.

And I’m looking now at what parents do when their kid’s unhappy, or upset, or they have a big disappointment—how do parents deal with that? And my preliminary evidence suggests that it’s something that’s learned in childhood. The parents might say, “Oh, you didn’t make it on to the team—let’s go out and have something to eat,” or, “Let’s go out and get you a new video game—that’ll take your mind off it.” Well, if the parents do that with their kids, we find that as adults, people are more likely to deal with distress in the same way, by giving themselves a little gift.

I can’t even remember my parents caring about my emotions. Mom must have done but we didn’t talk much about personal stuff when I was younger, and I didn’t know how to communicate well, so – no memories. I feel like I’m starting from scratch a little bit with JB in that regard. I do remember my friends having emotions and being what I thought of as weird because they seemed irrational though. Years on, I realize that they were totally normal in having emotions and you know, being human.

 

SHE-RA and the Princesses of Power!!!

September 13, 2018

Just a little (link) love: Twinsies edition

Just a little link love + small wins

The best hot dog story I’ve ever read.

Lovecraft was breathtakingly malevolently racist. I love that China Mieville and Nnedi Okafor respectively deal with being honored in their field with a horrific racist’s bust this way:

I put it out of sight, in my study, where only I can see it, and I have turned it to face the wall. So I am punishing the little fucker like the malevolent clown he was, I can look at it and remember the honour, and above all I am writing behind Lovecraft’s back.

Sniff. I knew Cait from her Blonde on a Budget days and I’ll miss her voice.

Lofty goals for California, hattip to Cloud for cluing me in: California approves goal for 100% renewable energy by 2045

Tough Love: When Bad Things Happen in the Wilderness

Cloud on Reclaiming Time. A friend with an older child talked about this playing into their decision not to have a second child or to add a dog to their family yet. She’s enjoying having her time back and I think it’s really smart of her to make a conscious decision to protect her time.

This is why intersectional feminism and eliminating toxic masculinity is for everyone when men are assaulted, they are also dismissed, called liars, and disbelieved. Sexual assaulters can go on and hurt many more people before the first targets will be believed. This is atrocious. We need to do better for everyone: women, men, children.

Angela’s garden updates are awesome.

Twinsies

September 6, 2018

Just a little (link) love: Learned Helplessness edition

Just a little link love + small wins

Matt talks about globalization and the changes we’re facing with an increasingly automated world.

I just wrote about how to harness my unbudgeted spending and Penny has her own list of things to do instead of shopping.

Diets don’t work.

Sometimes you need to drop that thing you’re writing. Kind of like how sometimes it’s just not worth reading something you’re truly not enjoying even a little bit.

What I learned about weight loss from spending a day inside a metabolic chamber: One of science’s best tools for understanding obesity is debunking myths about metabolism…. The big theme in many of these studies: Our metabolism silently shifts under new conditions and environments in ways we’re not usually aware of.

Is tail walking a dolphin’s dancing? Why would a wild dolphin carry on doing it after learning from a peer? (Learned from dolphins in captivity)

Learned helplessness

We’ve experienced this learned helplessness in our lives. After she’d gotten very sick with no good diagnosis or treatment, and their businesses had crashed, Dad was basically useless (not working, sunk in his own ego problems), she was trying really hard to work but her health was in the crapper, Mom reverted to a mentality I’d never seen before: blaming bad luck.

I don’t believe that we can think or willpower our way through everything and anything. You can’t wish away ill health (the cosmos knows I’ve tried!) or systemic ills, but I do believe that a helplessness mentality will undermine everything you do.

(There was a video here but I realized I didn’t have time to vet the sources so I’d rather remove it until I have a chance to do that.)

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