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

I discovered that my mom was even more of a badass than I had known. More to the point, Calvin Trillin knew it and wrote about it in the New Yorker! In 1967, he explained, a recruiter from Dow met a “friendly-looking, dark-haired girl,” and asked her if she was interested in working at Dow. “I’d be more interested in working for Dow if it weren’t doing something criminal,” she said. “I was wondering if a Dow employee could be prosecuted as a war criminal ten or fifteen years from now, under the precedent of Nuremburg.” The recruiter said: “I assume you’re talking about napalm.” My mom: “That, and crop defoliates.” The recruiter said he didn’t think the war crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg were analogous, and they discussed the distinctions he posited. The recruiter said the government decided how to use what Dow supplied, and “Dow made a decision to support our government.” My mom: “Do you think this is what the German manufacturers thought?” The recruiter asked if she was interested in working for Dow. My mom: “I’m interested in the moral position of working for Dow,” and she handed the recruiter a picture of a burned baby. “I’m curious what goes through the head of a Dow employee when he sees some of these pictures.”

Adam Hochschild, Rebel Cinderella: From Rags To Riches To Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes: ( immigrant story )
Jason Brennan, Good Work If You Can Get It: ( so you want to be a professor )
John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: ( yep, we screwed it up then too )
Serena Zabin, The Boston Massacre: A Family History: ( lost connections )
Rachel Monroe, Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession:( fascinated by crime )
Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State: ( innovation from the government )
Lynn Zubernis, There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done: ( SPN festschrift )
Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood: ( highly recommended )
John G. Turner, They Knew They Were Pilgrims: Plymouth Colony and the Contest for American Liberty: ( pilgrims' progress )
Eric H. Cline, Digging Up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon: ( not exactly Indiana Jones )

My Yuletide story was the completely obvious Restrike, a Mildred Ames - Anna to the Infinite Power story (Rowan/Anna).  It was a delight to be asked to write, in essence, idfic because hesychasm’s requests tracked my preferences so exactly.


( A debut and two sequels: Hawkins, Brennan, Pratchett and Baxter )

Once Upon A Time: ( spoilers are magic! )

Republican Angry at Trillion-Dollar-Coin Solution: “There turns out to be no serious economic or legal argument against the platinum coins…. The main drawback is that it’s hilarious…. See, here’s the thing. The United States government is not like a small business. Small businesses routinely go out of business. That is something we’d rather avoid as a country.” I will admit, the rule lawyer in me kind of wants to see this happen. The rest of the world already knows we’ve gone off the rails, so why not?

( stories about skilled labor, an old Druid, Harry Dresden, attack memes from outer space, psychic soulbonded YA )

Sweded movies and the end of Hollywood as we know it: You have to spot author Ben Walters the omission of other fan cultures and the apocalyptic rhetoric; there’s still some interesting stuff here.

Really good essay on The Dark Knight: “Also, let’s not forget that calling Batman ‘fascist’ is a little like accusing the Pope of being catholic, or hinting darkly that a particular bear may have, at some point in its life, shit in the woods.”

I … don’t actually trust an email from Joe Biden that says “trust me—you’ll have fun.”

( Andrews, Harper, Martin, Larbalestier & Brennan, Spencer )