What time is it? It’s time for the Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex Awards! Huzzah! The only sad thing is that apparently Patrick Ness (in an uncharacteristically curmudgeonly turn) opposes the Bad Sex Awards. He thinks they’ll have a chilling effect on people writing sex scenes. Maybe they will have a chilling effect on people writing bad sex scenes.
If you enjoyed the Sims Friends from my last links round-up, you’ll love this article about a woman determined to seduce the Sims Grim Reaper, a goal she pursued by repeatedly murdering her Sims in order to get the Grim Reaper to come over and be flirted with.
An interesting letter at Dear Author about criticisms of problematic behavior and the elision of specifics that results from slapping a label of racist/sexist/ableist on it really fast.
Tasha Robinson sparkles on the subject of The Incredibles (my favorite of the Pixar films) and the many good things about its portrayal of marriage and family.
Five writers talk about the process of coming up with titles, at The Millions. This seems as good a time as any to remind all of you that Tennessee Williams is the king of titles and everybody should be acknowledging that more.
In slightly weird news I don’t know what to do with, Netflix is creating a show version of A Series of Unfortunate Events. I’d love this to be awesome, but my heart doesn’t truly believe that it will be. Also, they should write a new ending for it. The real ending was dumb.
Perhaps we have discovered at last a mechanical reason why humans need sleep? Though take this with a grain of salt, as journalists are notoriously awful at interpreting scientific studies and explaining what they mean.
Gender imbalance in the New York Times crossword puzzle: Will Shortz does not care about it.
This review of Texts from Jane Eyre was exactly what I needed this week. My perpetual frustration with being a lady in a shitty misogynist system has been closer than usual to boiling point.
Slate has produced a useful chart of the cost-benefit ratio of various types of purebred dogs, compared to how popular they are. Short answer is that you’re right to spend money on poodles, but insane to get bulldogs. It also recommends that people buy more Bedlington terriers, a dog that looks like a sweet little lamb.
The below picture, taken at a 1992 Klan Rally, didn’t happen in the past two weeks. This week is just when I saw it. It causes me to feel more feelings than I’m capable of processing verbally, so I’ll just leave it here for you to look at.
