A proposed rule for political radicals, drawn from various experiences in Green, libertarian, and left-liberal politics:

If you can't even recruit the people who are getting it hardest in the neck from the existing system, you're not ready to change it.

This doesn't say what is wrong with your strategy. Maybe your policies are at fault, maybe your ( Read more... )

Has anybody ever heard a Daily Mail or Fox-style conservative rant receive a response anything like this?

"I'm not being unpatriotic, but you need to calm down. Nobody's going to listen to you when you sound white-hot angry all the time. I'm not saying it's fair, I'm just being a realist. Ordinary urban folks are going to be scared and switch off ( Read more... )

And the other post that got lost in the crossing:

I've just run across some excellent posts on the subject of Mary Sue and her variously-named male equivalent - that Very Special Character, arising from the world of fanfic, who can scarcely be better described than in these words of blackholly's:

Spock gets a long-lost daughter with purple eyes who's an ( Read more... )

Signal Boost.  I'm in the UK, and have no say in US politics - but if this sort of crap were going down in my country, bet hard that I'd hope my American friends would help get it onto the radar!

Originally posted by gabrielleabelleat Mississippi Personhood Amendment
Okay, so I don't usually do this, but this is an issue near and dear to me and this is getting very ( Read more... )

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 1,040 words.  The Young Duke turns towards his best enemy, and entertains even darker suspicions about our other heroes than the ones he nursed already.  He's pulling the chapter out of the line I'd intended, I'm not sure whither.  It was snarkily entertaining to watch the Puffin Superior and her secretary reacting to ( Read more... )

Following on from Nicola Griffith's Russ Pledge post in June, and the ongoing discussions about the literary invisibility of female authors* -

Since the end of May, guestblogger Anna at Echidne of the Snakes has been posting a Sunday series on A Literary Canon of Women Writers, beginning with Enheduanna of Ur (23rd century BCE).  She's now reached ( Read more... )