Gosh, it’s been a few weeks since the last linkspam! We’ve just been really tired. And busy.
(Maybe don’t get your hopes up too high for a linkspam next Friday — Liz is usually the one to hit post, because she’s most likely to be at a computer, and she’s leaving work early for Continuum set-up.)
Our links today may not be fresh, but they are juicy!
Good news! Some convicts in 1829 hijacked a boat bound for Tasmania, jumped on it, and sailed off, becoming Historical Bogans Off the Coast of Japan.
We have been referring to this discovery as ‘a literal present for Steph from the past’.
I’m an anxious person, and in any situation, my brain will always leap to the worst case scenario. Even in situations, eg fandom, where the stakes are extremely low, if there are even any stakes at all.
So here are some things which I am worried about in the world of nerd-dom!
The avocado discourse has reached America — that is to say, an Australian property mogul said that if Australian millennials were more like him, inheriting $34,000 instead of frittering their earned income away on smashed avocado on toast at $19 a pop, we’d all be able to afford houses.
Naturally, Americans assumed it was about them.
I have no time for this nonsense, but I do have time for smashed avocado. So I took a tour of brunch menus, comparing and contrasting their avo offerings — and I found them distressingly limited. Has the smashed avocado had its day? Are we all buying houses now?
Or, Liz encounters a fruit that millions of people already knew about. (And loves it.)
We are going old-school today – in song, but not in links
This post was born when I looked at the Iced Vo-Vo I was about to eat and thought, “You know what would make this biscuit better? If it was larger, and less dry, and had more jam. Or if it was a cake.”
Then I googled “iced vo-vo cake” and the rest is history.
There’s a popular myth that octopi are literally aliens. The truth is actually more interesting: they are tremendously intelligent — comparable to a human toddler or a very smart dog — but their “mind” is spread throughout their body, with neurons in their eight arms.
Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life by Peter Godfrey-Smith looks at the evolution of cephalopods, their capacity for intelligence, the future of the species, and the big philosophical question: what is it like to be a cephalopod?
But even though this book was totes #onbrand and highly relevant to my interests, I found myself … skimming.
Continue reading “[book review] Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life”
Aren’t you tired of this already? I’m tired of this.
[Sad confession: we have no song this week. “The next linkspam already!” is the placeholder title I put in when I created this draft on Friday afternoon last week. We’re just really busy, okay?]
25 Years On, Melina Marchetta Tells Us Everything You Want To Know About ‘Looking For Alibrandi’ (She also discusses Dance Academy!)
Wellness, Womanhood, and the West: How Goop Profits From Endless Illness
Highlight:
(In Goop’s framing, “the East,” a place that’s never identified as an actual geographic location, doesn’t have cardiologists or pharmaceuticals. It is also, the literature implies, free of disease.)
Tracey Thorn: the unbearable whiteness of Britpop
Books For Girls – Kill Your Darlings looks at The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and the dismissal of YA as a category with potential literary merit.
It shouldn’t be surprising that a novel about a teenage girl might have something interesting or insightful to say.
Shop owner says cashless welfare card has left him $100,000 short
Why the Reef will never be the same again
Video Explores Sci-Fi Trope Of Women Who Are ‘Born Sexy Yesterday’
