Friday link round-up

I recently updated Firefox. As a habitual tab hoarder, I’m not sure I love the way this new version seems to try and group new tabs when they open. I don’t quite understand the crazy moon logic. What was so bad about just chucking it to the end over there on the right?

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Things I love: the style guide I just got from a press I recently sold a short story to. It includes everything from useful formatting tips and how to submit a book proposal to them to advice on social networking/promotion to their preferred spelling of a common sexual fluid. Which should give you a hint that the short story I sold is a little bit on the naughty side.

Memo to my mother: I now not only write gay porn. I write it for money. Be proud.

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A friend recently linked this fantastic editorial about the current culture’s problems with telling facts (being empirical data which can be proved or disproved by reason, experimentation, and research) from opinions (which are not empirical).

It’s such an interesting problem, but also quite a frightening one because someone who does not distinguish between facts and opinions is actually impossible to reason with.

If you’re like me and occasionally have moments when you think the whole world has gone mad, this may be a useful data point in understanding why you feel that way.

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Other things, some not necessarily directly related to writing, and offered in no particular order:

- Did you know that Oscar Wilde and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle shared a table of contents? Tony Lee does. And tells you all about the unveiling of the new plaque commemorating it. With pictures.

- Writer Peter Watts has been found guilty. He stood accused of assaulting border guards on the way back into Canada. His post regarding the trial and the verdict is here.

- I recently joked to someone that I try on selves the way some people try on sunglasses. Then I read this short post over at Apex about heteronyms. In no way do I feel any less crazy. I do, however, feel like I’m in pretty good company.

- Retired American General John Sheehan blames gay solders in the Dutch Army for the Bosnian genocide. It’s the sort of assertion that I can’t really parse and take apart effectively because it is so JAW-DROPPINGLY BATSHIT INSANE. Fortunately, the Dutch PM is more articulate than I am.

- Related: A book of portraits of closeted, active duty LGBTQ servicemen and women. These people are not only willing to die for my country. They are willing to do it under duress, in a military that does not believe they are brave and worthy.

- Passed on by a friend: the owner of Kansas City restaurant, Saigon 39, verbally attacked a woman who confronted him about littering. Bonus points for homophobia and misogyny. See Also: places I won’t be dining at when I am in Kansas City at the beginning of April.

- A woman’s account of her illegal 1962 abortion. Read this. It is important. That date? Significant because that’s pre-Roe v. Wade. And it’s terrifying. Whatever one’s personal beliefs happen to be about when life begins, I can’t imagine anyone thinks a world like this could possibly be an improvement. Surely robust sex education with an emphasis on effective prevention, with safe, available, and legal abortion as an option is — at the very worst — the lesser of two evils?

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com