I don't mean to nitpick, Tom, but is this really your plan?

I’m promoting Dropbox again for easy, automatically updating cloud storage. If you use this link to sign up,  I get extra space too, but I’d recommend it anyway; I use it to back up my entire computer, which has made moving between computers ten times easier than it used to be.

Here’s the wikipedia entry for a somewhat timely Asimov story, Franchise.  I was surprised at how many of the Asimov stories from that period I still remembered.  Someday gave me chills as a kid.  (In other tech/politics news, I am also obsessively reading stories about the failure of Romney's Orca.  Successful computer programs are made of people!)

( Genderbending fantasy, book magic, Terry Pratchett does many worlds )

Relevant to your interests? The complete run of Omni magazine, free.

Now, election-related:

I need to do this next time: want shorter lines to vote? Volunteer as a pollworker.  This year, I voted absentee-in-person because I’m not at home, but with luck next time I will be able to help out.

Interesting to finally see white people’s race-based voting treated as something that needs explaining in reasonably mainstream media.  “Obama's support was so broad that if white people had simply split 50-50, rather than favoring their ethnic candidate, the president would have won 58 percent of the popular vote.”

I try not to do this too much, but: sweet, sweet schadenfreude.

I didn’t know that all of original Elfquest is free online.

Another piece of news to me: the identity of this redshirt who survived the whole TOS episode. 

On the fantasy of competition in education: “[A]ll schools will be excellent when they compete. That’s why all those programs on all those channels on your TV dial are excellent, and why every product in the marketplace is excellent.”

Women, Men and Fiction: Notes on How Not to Answer Hard Questions: Jeffrey Eugenides and the things he doesn’t need to see.

Revenge: was I the only one ( Spoilers are after your daughter )

( Two books and a novella )

Fringe and the Sarah Connor Chronicles are no longer Yuletide-eligible. This is both good (many stories exist!) and bad (I can’t ask for them any more!).

Typo that I love for Dean Winchester: fistborn of John & Mary Winchester. If the punch fits …

Political fan fiction, or political tinhats?

This story on writing instruction is interesting in itself, but also fascinating for how it suggests that the tools that make people competent writers are also the foundations of the most compelling storytelling, as Film Studies Hulk (with an assist from the South Park guys) argues—you can scroll down to point 24 if you don’t have a lot of time.
( Michael Marshall, Makoto Yukimura, Suzanne Collins )

I even kicked in for a subscription, though it's free online.  This issue is police-themed.

The rules of language and power: The Thin Blue Lie:

But there is a fundamental difference between a lying civilian and a lying police officer. When cops lie, they are part of a system of language that is integral to the state’s monopoly on violence. I quickly came to realize that many officer interviews followed one of a handful of scripts, with troves of phrases to express and explain suspicion (“high-crime area,” “furtive movements,” “erratic behavior”), to justify an escalation of force (the “demeanor” of a “defendant” was “agitated,” “belligerent,” or “highly uncooperative;” people “resisted” by “flailing” their arms), and to establish probable cause for an arrest (“small objects” were “exchanged for U.S. currency” in a “hand-to-hand transaction”). In cases without objective evidence like medical records or video, it was easier for investigators to accept an officer’s account of an incident because the cop’s language was far more likely to be consistent. Civilians were asked to provide multiple statements throughout an investigation (on the phone and in person), and inconsistencies between those statements were often used to discredit their claims. Meanwhile, cops were prepared immediately before their interviews by union attorneys, who remained present during the statement lest officers stray too far from the official line. If language is a weapon, cops were equipped with firepower and the training to use it, just as they were with actual guns. Meanwhile ­complainants—civilians whose circumstances put them in frequent contact with police—have been denied mastery of the official language.

There's also this picture of a bunch of provocative quotes, provocatively attributed. E.g., “violence is to politics as roses are to Valentine's Day; without it, I’m just not sure you mean it.” And the story about the photographer-cop is equally thought-provoking:

The photographs of Antonio Bolfo, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate and former NYPD patrolman who took artistic photographs while on the job, humanize both officers and civilians. So says the The New York Times. But is this true? And if it is, does it matter? As to the civilians: when a cop says ‘cheese,’ do you have any choice but to smile? And as to the cops, the Times seizes on the photographs of police officers relaxing on the roofs of New York City Housing Authority facilities as emblematic of their much talked about humanity. ‘This is like a safe haven for them,’ Bolfo tells the Times. ‘Kind of like, collect their thoughts, talk to their loved ones, be people. Shed their police persona and relax a little bit.’ It is a place forbidden to civilians. The intensity of the relief this seclusion brings the officers is inverse to their connection to the community. The more they are merely foreign occupiers, the more they enjoy the view, a view that the very residents of the buildings on which they so symbolically trod are not allowed to enjoy. It is just another of those petty asymmetries that separates them from us, the things they can do but you cannot, no different from the way they demand free coffee at diners, run red lights for no reason, illegally park their vehicles, make their friends’ tickets disappear, distribute their union cards to family members so they get preferential treatment, raise their voice at you on a whim, place their hands on you to ‘guide’ you to compliance with their instructions, slam you on the pavement for arguing with them, shoot your dog, break down your door and tear apart everything you own—no different than the way that Mr. Bolfo got to take photographs of police at work because he was an officer when today even journalists are arrested for doing their jobs.

What do China’s internet censors actually censor? Collective action and porn. Criticize the government, except for censorship, all you like—but don’t organize for any purpose. Really interesting, and provides some perspective on Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus and my thoughts on it.

Top ten differences between white terrorists and others: 5. White terrorists are part of a “fringe.” Other terrorists are apparently mainstream.

A surprising and frightening chart about high frequency trading.

Gotye remixes YouTube covers of Somebody That I Used to Know. Or, for humor, Batman Maybe!

Podfic of my SPN gen story Ugly Duckling by applegeuse. I love this concept so much and want every author to write a version.

( Marta Randall, George R.R. Martin )

( Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie, Lost Girls ) I don’t want to pay for shipping on PaperbackSwap to get rid of these large and heavy volumes, but if you’re in the DC area and think you might have a different opinion of the books, I’ll happily give them to you.

Katha Pollitt: “Why does it seem like a reasonable policy suggestion to tell Jessica she needs a husband, and pie in the sky to say she needs a union? Or a national day care system like the one in France, where teachers are well-paid, with benefits?”

Massive overgeneralizations, pro writer edition: “encouragement, professional or otherwise, is never enough. Students are glad to hear you think they can write, but they need, as I did, the confirmation of a publishing contract, which involves money.” My law review contracts evidently missed a clause. In fairness to that objection (though it doesn’t really help the overall dismissal of nonpaid writers), the author does point out that the money is basically symbolic most of the time: a symbol of being deemed worthy in a hierarchy of value.

I'm joining the EFF in asking Congress to defend bloggers against bogus lawsuits designed to silence them.

The Black Widow imagined on pulp covers.

( Ready Player One )

Favorite tweet on health care: "Breaking: Conservatives planning to leave U.S., but can't find wealthy Western democracy without universal health care."

If you have warm feelings for Chief Justice Roberts, maybe you should instead celebrate Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

How should a person be reviewed? Hint: answer apparently differs if you’re a woman.  (Also: great review title: up there with "Indiana Dworkin and the Temple of Law," another of my favorites, a review of Dworkin's Law's Empire.)  The book itself doesn’t sound like my cup of tea, but “He’s just another man who wants to teach me something” does ring a bell.

The erasure of female fandom: please read the first couple of comments!

Your ebook is reading you: “nonfiction books tend to be read in fits and starts, while novels are generally read straight through, and that nonfiction books, particularly long ones, tend to get dropped earlier. Science-fiction, romance and crime-fiction fans often read more books more quickly than readers of literary fiction do, and finish most of the books they start. Readers of literary fiction quit books more often and tend skip around between books.”

The Star Wars that I Used to Know: I think I have a new parody to start off my copyright class!

Two links of ugh, one combination ugh/awesomeness, one pure awesomeness.

Today in topsy-turvy land: “‘We can't be outcome driven,’ said Anne Tompkins, the U.S. attorney in Charlotte [explaining why the government was opposing the release of people it concedes are legally innocent of the crimes for which they’re imprisoned]. ‘We've got to make sure we follow the law, and people should want us to do that.’”  One could call this use of “follow the law” mere equivocation, but mere equivocation doesn’t keep legally innocent people locked up.

How not to think about rape: U.S. government decides to perform cost-benefit analysis on prison rape prevention programs.

Great article on race and fandom (cosplay).

serrico wrote a Charlie/girl!Dean story for me!

( William Gibson, paranormal romance, Firefly: Still Flying )

Infocide in open content communities: Includes flouncing, but puts it in a larger context.

Bankruptcy court overlooks predatory lending, discharges student loans based on debtor’s autism instead. It’s important to remember that the strategies that benefit an individual client in court can be harmful overall (and maybe even to the client in some ways). Here, the strategy is only desirable because of the way creditor-favoring laws have made it almost impossible for a person to discharge educational debt; we didn’t have to create these alternatives.

Via giandujakiss: There was fan fiction before you called it fan fiction, and before there was copyright it was called writing. -- Anne Jamison, English professor

( Grant Morrison, the Columbian exchange, Barbie as folk art, the relationship between freedom and the internet, and a great book on the history of technology )