links:

Film Crit Hulk Smash: NEVER HATE A MOVIE, OR: HOW QUENTIN TARANTINO GOT HULK TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMBS no really read this even if you don't like FILM CRIT HULK or QT, for it is all of the godtiers. not sure it is going to stop me from hateloving everything, though.

Ira Glass: "Your taste is why your work disappoints you."

David Gaider's general response to the Dragon Age fanfic contest; this is genuine and useful, in spite of the reservations one learns to have about people who look at fic from the outside.

for fans of the US immigration system, here's Salon on the uses and abuses of H-1B visas. Apparently the poor, innocent president has no idea. Cute.

so. Not so long ago I was getting aggravated, more privately than this, about the ongoing lie that rural & suburban cultures are somehow safer to exist in than cities, and then I go and read this thing by Rolling Stone about the teen suicide cluster in Anoka-Hennepin, which was until recently home to Michele Bachmann. This is not something you should read unless you like reading nonfiction that deliberately keeps you guessing about which of the child protagonists are going to still be alive at the end.