Friday link party has to be fresh, has to go downstairs

[bodlon]

Behold! Links!

- If you have a few dollars, please check out Show Your Hearts. On July 3rd, a car crossed the median and struck a van carrying a family of five. Both parents were killed, and two of the children suffered spinal injuries which have left them paralyzed from the waist down. Donations will go into a trust to support these three children, and to help pay for their care and rehabilitation.

- Turning Writers Into Motherfucking Rock Stars. If you'll excuse me, I need to throw a chair through this hotel window.

- OK Go: still making weird-ass, innovative videos. Their new one, for "All Is Not Lost" utilzes HTML5, is designed to be viewed in Google Chrome for maximum insanity, and is programmed to accommodate a message of your choosing if you're using the right software. It's also chock full of unitards and moments that land smack dab in the middle of my personal uncanny valley. Whoa.

- From ProPublica, a really great round-up of the debt ceiling drama. Includes all kinds of great links and info, and even good if you're still trying to figure out what all the fuss is about.

- Optionally, this cartoon explaining the debt ceiling issue via Star Wars is pretty good, too.

- I have finally gotten around to downloading and listening to SF Squeecast. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and it's probably going to swell my reading list even further and further beyond the brim of manageability.

- Over at Comics Alliance, Laura Hudson addresses the DC vs. women issue, and lays out on a more or less 101 level of why the dearth of female talent at DC is a problem. Relatedly, Batgirl's timely intervention may have caused a shift after all. Damn right, you'd better listen to Batgirl.

- Over at Trans-Fusion, a marvelously thoughtful piece on the problem of "passing," its implications, and the ethics involved. True story: for a while, early on in my transition, I tried to be stealth. I actually had reasonable success on the whole, but I found that the whole thing was desperately uncomfortable for me. I was just as out of control of my experience and my story as I'd been before I began. Seeing gay role models owning their lives and being vocal in public made me question my choice to conceal my history and transgender status, especially when I'm in a position where I can be safely out and vocal. Not everyone is this lucky. Those of us who are may, I think, owe a responsibility to be visible for those who can't be.

- Also, hey look! Actual transfolk getting actual trans roles. Lots and lots of room for progress here, but given the right slope a wee snowball can get pretty epic.

- The Rejectionist nails the problem with the term "Tea Party Hobbits" in exactly the way I hoped someone on the Internet might.

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