I've been seeing a lot of calls for people on the left (defined very broadly as "everyone who opposed Trump") to have empathy for Trump voters. To listen and respond to their concerns. To reach out to the Trump voters they know and try to change their minds with gentle persuasion and calm talks. That, I'm being told everywhere, is the work in ( Read more... )

Well, yesterday was a day, wasn't it?

First Trump tweeted his impressively anti-Semitic anti-Hillary ad: a star of David calling her "corrupt" on a background of dollars. Here it is. After criticism, he pasted a circle over the star...poorly. CNN's newest employee has called objections to this ad "political correctness run amok."As an aside, I ( Read more... )

I was reading a great piece about queer YA lit the other day about intersectionality, and the multiple ways that characters and people can embody differences from the normative “white, cisgender, heterosexual, abled, Christian (or similar morality structure) and more often than not, male.” While I really like this piece, I was brought up short by “ ( Read more... )

Yesterday, my mother came to look after Solly so I could go buy some clothing that fit me (I've gone up a size or two since having my son; I have no worries about that in and of itself, but it does mean that I have closet full of clothing that no longer fits me, and that is frustrating). I had been looking forward to this: I was going to go to the ( Read more... )

What topic of burning importance could return me to blogging? Human rights? Infectious disease? Right-wing assholes ( Read more... )

Haven't posted in a while, but this is the kind of thing I can't resist.

I didn't know smallpox persisted as long as the late 1970s, but thanks in part to this man, we have actually eradicated it. That's the goal for polio now.

So anti-vaxxers can shut it. Vaccines work. Smallpox is dead.

I have a new story up at Tor.com today, "Ballroom Blitz." It's a retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses fairy tale set in a punk dive on the old Lower East Side. It's a story with a lot of history behind it ( Read more... )

It's been an exciting week! Not only did I turn 39 and finish my 25th of pregnancy (the baby is kicking up a storm and I'm super-showing!), but Ellen Datlow's anthology The Doll Collection was released from Tor Books, and it contains my latest story, "The Permanent Collection ( Read more... )

Back when my godson was just a little baby, instead of the big-boy-underpants-wearing, articulate, mobile child he is today, his mother, my best friend, got in the habit of calling him Squeaky Mouse, because...he squeaked a lot and reminded her of the cats' beloved mouse toys that also squeaked a lot ( Read more... )

I was walking home the other day, and I had the music on my iphone set to shuffle, and some of the most ominous sounds I have ever heard came through the headphones. I recognized it, but I couldn't place it. It was apocalyptic. This was the music that would be playing when the mushroom clouds formed over New York City, DC, Chicago, Moscow, ( Read more... )