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Jun. 26th, 2019 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. The Long Read: "Took you by Surprise: John Lennon and Paul McCartney's Lost Reunion"
"Five years after the Beatles disbanded, a period fueled by intense acrimony, Lennon and McCartney set aside their differences and got back together one more time. Inside the rollicking atmosphere of that May 1974 recording session."
2. Tiffany Caban Makes History Winning the District Attorney Position in Queens, NY
Another earthshaking political upset roared through Queens, New York, on Tuesday night when Tiffany Cabán claimed victory in a six-person primary race for Queens District Attorney—the first competitive race there in a generation.
Her leading opponent, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, trailed by just over 1,000 votes with 3,400 paper ballots outstanding and the Associated Press had the race as to close call Wednesday. But in even matching the support of the once formidable Queens machine nearly a year to the day after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shocked the national political scene with her primary upset win against powerful House Democrat Joe Crowley, Cabán's performance in a borough-wide race marked a new high-water mark for the rising left.
With high-profile endorsements from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and then Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren, Cabán, a 31-year-old Latina public defender who identifies as queer, would be poised with a primary win to become the top law enforcement official in a county of 2.4 million people.
Her platform of “people-powered justice,” including ending cash bail, not prosecuting subway turnstile jumping, prosecuting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, closing Rikers Island and decriminalizing sex work marks a massive departure from the traditional tough-on-crime, prosecutorial approach of DAs around the country including the longtime Queens DA, Richard Brown.
3. Wednesday Reading Meme:
What I just finished reading?
A lot of comic books -- comxicology is wonderful. It's easier to purchase and read digitially than otherwise, and cheaper. I get a lot of freebies. Because it lets you borrow up to 50 at a time.
I'm considering trying Ed Brubaker's Captain America followed by Ta Nesi-Coates take on the superhero. Brubaker is an interesting writer. I did read his X-men comics.
On the fence about Matthew Rosenberg and Salvadore Larroca on Un-Canny at the moment. It's...a very male comic. And a wee bit violent for my taste. Not to mention dark and convoluted. I realized this after I read the Champions War of the Realms comic, and the Champions Vol 1 series which was far more enjoyable -- partly because it was Cyclops plus the wonderful new characters of Kamala, Amadeos, and Miles Morales, not to mention Viv. The X-men desperately need a reboot, they've been plodding about repeating the same stories for about four to five years now.
And "The Widows of Malabar Hill" which disappointed me.
What I'm reading now?
Where the Crawdads Sing -- this is possibly the best thing I've read in the last four-five years that isn't a graphic novel. Sad. But true.
The description and dialogue are on point. The writer is a true wordsmith, capturing the sound of the Carolinas with her prose, along with the smell and texture. There's very little telling outside of a brief summarization of the main character's parents background (which I sort of wish the writer hadn't done and I thought largely unnecessary and a tad jarring.) We're for the most part in Kya's point of view -- a young girl growing up all along on the marsh, from the age of 10 forward. Most of her family (except for her father) leaves her when she's barely six years old. Her father disappears when she's ten. There are a few people who do help her out, and it's not a hard or depressing story to read. The writer focuses on the positive bits, and how the girl survives, not the horrors. (A welcome change of pace.)
Also it is realistically crafted, not melodramatic or contrived. There's a mystery -- which we flash forward to occasionally and is how the book begins. And three-four points of view: the girl, Kya, the boy she befriends, Tate, the gas station owners who befriend her, Jumpin Jack and Mabel (who are black), and the detectives trying to figure out who killed a man named Chase in 1969. The book flashes back to 1950.
One of the better books I've read in a while.
What I'm reading next?
Eh...I don't know. I might try to read "Station Eleven" again, I think I have it. Got it as a Kindle Daily Deal a while back. OR another fantasy, sci-fi novel that I own, or maybe horror. Don't know.
I have quite a few romance novels on the Kindle, but nothing has grabbed me.
4. Romance Novelists Face Online Harrassment from Social Media
The subject line was simple—nice, even: “Big fan!”
But when Alisha Rai clicked to open the email, she found a message from a man she didn’t know: “Your dad is so lucky he’s dead and doesn’t have to see the twat you’ve become. And the utter trash you write. Whore.”
She screenshotted the email. Then she went back to work.
With more than 15,000 Twitter followers and a slew of best-selling romance novels—including Glutton for Pleasure, A Gentleman in the Street, and her latest, The Right Swipe—Rai is used to talking to readers on Twitter, email, and elsewhere on the internet. But with that success and connection also comes near-daily harassment—propositions in her DMs, alongside threats and abuse in her inbox.
“It feels like I almost can’t remember a time when it didn’t happen,” Rai says.
"Five years after the Beatles disbanded, a period fueled by intense acrimony, Lennon and McCartney set aside their differences and got back together one more time. Inside the rollicking atmosphere of that May 1974 recording session."
2. Tiffany Caban Makes History Winning the District Attorney Position in Queens, NY
Another earthshaking political upset roared through Queens, New York, on Tuesday night when Tiffany Cabán claimed victory in a six-person primary race for Queens District Attorney—the first competitive race there in a generation.
Her leading opponent, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz, trailed by just over 1,000 votes with 3,400 paper ballots outstanding and the Associated Press had the race as to close call Wednesday. But in even matching the support of the once formidable Queens machine nearly a year to the day after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shocked the national political scene with her primary upset win against powerful House Democrat Joe Crowley, Cabán's performance in a borough-wide race marked a new high-water mark for the rising left.
With high-profile endorsements from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and then Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren, Cabán, a 31-year-old Latina public defender who identifies as queer, would be poised with a primary win to become the top law enforcement official in a county of 2.4 million people.
Her platform of “people-powered justice,” including ending cash bail, not prosecuting subway turnstile jumping, prosecuting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, closing Rikers Island and decriminalizing sex work marks a massive departure from the traditional tough-on-crime, prosecutorial approach of DAs around the country including the longtime Queens DA, Richard Brown.
3. Wednesday Reading Meme:
What I just finished reading?
A lot of comic books -- comxicology is wonderful. It's easier to purchase and read digitially than otherwise, and cheaper. I get a lot of freebies. Because it lets you borrow up to 50 at a time.
I'm considering trying Ed Brubaker's Captain America followed by Ta Nesi-Coates take on the superhero. Brubaker is an interesting writer. I did read his X-men comics.
On the fence about Matthew Rosenberg and Salvadore Larroca on Un-Canny at the moment. It's...a very male comic. And a wee bit violent for my taste. Not to mention dark and convoluted. I realized this after I read the Champions War of the Realms comic, and the Champions Vol 1 series which was far more enjoyable -- partly because it was Cyclops plus the wonderful new characters of Kamala, Amadeos, and Miles Morales, not to mention Viv. The X-men desperately need a reboot, they've been plodding about repeating the same stories for about four to five years now.
And "The Widows of Malabar Hill" which disappointed me.
What I'm reading now?
Where the Crawdads Sing -- this is possibly the best thing I've read in the last four-five years that isn't a graphic novel. Sad. But true.
The description and dialogue are on point. The writer is a true wordsmith, capturing the sound of the Carolinas with her prose, along with the smell and texture. There's very little telling outside of a brief summarization of the main character's parents background (which I sort of wish the writer hadn't done and I thought largely unnecessary and a tad jarring.) We're for the most part in Kya's point of view -- a young girl growing up all along on the marsh, from the age of 10 forward. Most of her family (except for her father) leaves her when she's barely six years old. Her father disappears when she's ten. There are a few people who do help her out, and it's not a hard or depressing story to read. The writer focuses on the positive bits, and how the girl survives, not the horrors. (A welcome change of pace.)
Also it is realistically crafted, not melodramatic or contrived. There's a mystery -- which we flash forward to occasionally and is how the book begins. And three-four points of view: the girl, Kya, the boy she befriends, Tate, the gas station owners who befriend her, Jumpin Jack and Mabel (who are black), and the detectives trying to figure out who killed a man named Chase in 1969. The book flashes back to 1950.
One of the better books I've read in a while.
What I'm reading next?
Eh...I don't know. I might try to read "Station Eleven" again, I think I have it. Got it as a Kindle Daily Deal a while back. OR another fantasy, sci-fi novel that I own, or maybe horror. Don't know.
I have quite a few romance novels on the Kindle, but nothing has grabbed me.
4. Romance Novelists Face Online Harrassment from Social Media
The subject line was simple—nice, even: “Big fan!”
But when Alisha Rai clicked to open the email, she found a message from a man she didn’t know: “Your dad is so lucky he’s dead and doesn’t have to see the twat you’ve become. And the utter trash you write. Whore.”
She screenshotted the email. Then she went back to work.
With more than 15,000 Twitter followers and a slew of best-selling romance novels—including Glutton for Pleasure, A Gentleman in the Street, and her latest, The Right Swipe—Rai is used to talking to readers on Twitter, email, and elsewhere on the internet. But with that success and connection also comes near-daily harassment—propositions in her DMs, alongside threats and abuse in her inbox.
“It feels like I almost can’t remember a time when it didn’t happen,” Rai says.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-28 03:13 am (UTC)That's such a perfect statement. They want it to be anything but what it is, just like there's currently complete denial about the latest allegation against Donald Trump.
Abrams, who lost her race in November amid cries of voter suppression, once wrote under the pseudonym Selena Montgomery. When Colbert began to read an excerpt, her face changed—“God, no, I don’t want you to read from any of these,” she told him. “I want people to read them in the quiet of their home.”
But Colbert pressed on, a move that the writer Ashley C. Ford later said “was a little bit trying to embarrass you…. It felt dismissive of the genre.”
This is exactly like how the media enjoys ambushing celebrities with fanfic or fan art about them. They want them to be embarrassed or even angry because the message is that anything sexual is embarrassing and thus should never be spoken of.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-28 12:37 pm (UTC)They want it to be anything but what it is, just like there's currently complete denial about the latest allegation against Donald Trump.
Exactly. The sexism or gender preference coupled with misogyny is deeply ingrained, so deep that a lot of people don't see it and it's in both men and women. I was reading a rather insane thread on twitter last night -- where various "women" were supporting the charge of manslaughter against a woman who got shot and had a miscarriage in Alabama. They believed since she was the aggressor in the conflict, she was rightfully charged and I thought, WTF?
And the fact that no one cares about the rape allegations against Trump but instigated impeachment hearings against Clinton for engaging in consensual sex with Monica Lewinsky. Really? Although what happened there and with Clarence Thomas merely shows how embedded and for how long it has been.
I remember getting into a fight with two woman in the Buffy fandom -- who were felt women should stick in traditional roles.
And don't get me started on the whole -- "a woman truly becomes a woman after she has been penetrated by the penis or intercourse" -- by an educated woman who was ten-fifteen years younger than me at the time. Uh. Your gender isn't defined by having sex with someone. Nor are you defined by it. Can it be life-changing? Sure. But so are a lot of other things...
This is exactly like how the media enjoys ambushing celebrities with fanfic or fan art about them. They want them to be embarrassed or even angry because the message is that anything sexual is embarrassing and thus should never be spoken of
It's also the brunt of so many jokes. If you haven't had sexual intercourse -- you are ridiculed, if you have had "multiple" partners, you are ridiculed. If you are kinky -- you are ridiculed. We can't talk about menupause, mammograms, breasts, vagina, penis, periods, UTI, etc -- without getting embarrassed or using it to humiliate someone. It's as if we're all embarrassed by our bodies and shamed by them. Or they are objectified by the media and those around us.
As much as I'd like to blame the media -- the media is only reacting to what is going on with our society. If it wasn't there -- they wouldn't do it.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-28 04:27 pm (UTC)o.0 One wonders why they were watching Buffy at all.
As much as I'd like to blame the media -- the media is only reacting to what is going on with our society. If it wasn't there -- they wouldn't do it.
I don't know about that. For decades pre-Internet the media reflected a view of the public that was often quite at odds with what was actually occurring. I think, for example, about progressive politics, or general habits. It was in bed with whatever political power pulled its strings and it thought nothing of distorting reality to please advertisers or keep access to what they considered important sources.
Post-Internet it became difficult to hide the reality that was bursting out all over, although they still try pretty hard. For example, "They want it to be anything but what it is" can still be applied to the way mass shootings are discussed. For decades it was obvious that misogyny and feelings of self-worth regarding romantic relationships was at the heart of a lot of them, particularly school shootings. Only recently has that begun to creep into media discussions, and it's still very limited, even when the shooters themselves are perfectly open about it. It's talked about like an aberration rather than the common thread.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-29 02:03 am (UTC)I've long since come to the conclusion that not everyone interprets the world or media the same way I do, or perceives it. Some appear to apply very narrow and somewhat odd filters and only see whatever validates their perspective on the world.
She was also more of an Angel fan than Buffy fan...so there's that.