lots of links:

-Do Better from Hey, Author, which is an actuallygood thing on tumblr.

The 5 Stages Of Graduation Grief may be familiar to some of us; see also Scholastic Snake Oil, Why Does School Suck?:

In other posts, I've talked about all of the contrived situations and narratives schools present to us. Almost no one ever has to explore a question, or create something, that has actual consequences while he or she is in school.

Brad Hicks on militarism:

And those that served in Korea, preventing the Korean people from voting for the government they wanted to elect? Those who served in Vietnam, doing the same thing? Those who served up and down Latin America, defending a tiny rich white minority in those countries and their right to own the rest of the country as slaves? Those who went to the Balkans to put Islamists in power in Kosovo and neo-Nazis in power in Croatia? Those who screwed up the mission in Somalia, thus teaching bin Laden that Americans were pushovers? Those who went into Iraq to install what was supposed to be a pro-American regime, and ended up handing that country to Hezbollah? And all of that at the cost of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of civilian lives in those countries over the last sixty years? I don't think that makes them heroes. I think it makes them dupes at best, and willing accomplices to war crimes at worst. No, I'm not even vaguely proud of your service. No, I'm not even vaguely grateful for it. I am, depending on which atrocity you served in, to varying degrees ashamed of your service. I'm just generally too polite to say so to your face.

Come and get me.

Old now, but I only just found Julian Dibbell's Wired article on griefing, which is something of a followup to A Rape In Cyberspace (though not on the same level of must-read awesome). It does, however, make a point I keep on making about the pearlclutchy bullshit-mongering that is 'internet death threats':

Kyanka went on to review the long and bloodless history of death threats among Internet commenters, then revealed his own impressive credentials as a target: "I've been getting death threats for years now. I'm the king of online dying," he wrote. "Furries hate me, Juggalos hate me, script kiddies hate me, people banned from our forums hate me, people not banned from our forums hate me, people who hate people banned from our forums hate me ... everybody hates me."

But almost as an afterthought, Kyanka appended the text of a death threat sent from a banned ex-Goon, aimed not at him but at his infant daughter: "Collateral damage. Remember those words when I kick in your door, duct tape Lauren Seoul's mouth, fuck her in the ass, and toss her over a bridge."

Next to that text, Kyanka posted a photo of himself holding the smiling little girl. His evident confidence in his own safety, and that of the child in his arms, was strangely moving — in an unnerving sort of way.

...I guess I have to place that as a lead-in to a new contribution to one of the great wanks of long ago, which, yes, now features actual non-internet murders; VB/Jordan Wood/Thanfiction/Andy Blake/as someone on LJ called him, VBSaffBridge's ex has been blogging about her life in the hobbitelfcult and how she eventually got out of it. Here are all her cult-related blog entries; the two at the turn of the page, "Operation Catch And Release", come most highly recommended but fancult TWS sufferers may be required to read all of them. I only just heard about the murder-suicide part of the wank; a family member of one of the victims left a more direct note about VBSaffBridge's role in the extortion that proceeded the murders in a comment to Turimel's blog post about it.

...Yeah, I don't even. I swear sociopathic behaviour is fascinating mostly because of its horrifying purposelessness.

Also in life on the internet, Larry Sanger: What should we do about Wikipedia's porn problem?

From CalculatedRisk, Fed Survey: From 2007 to 2010, Median Family income declined 7.7%, Median Net Worth declined 38.8%. Oh, and "The only group (by income) with an increase in the median net worth was the top 10%." Oh, and "median income had also fallen slightly in the preceding three-year period." Obviously this continual descent of median income between 2004 and 2010 was Obama's fault.

For fans of anti-immigrant policymaking, Theresa May is trying to make the UK actually worse than the US; dunno if she'll succeed. It's likely to affect my future as a British citizen who doesn't live there; if they want to turn me into a British citizen who can't live there, they can and they will. For other classy shit happening in the UK right now, Coachloads of jobless people brought in to work unpaid on river pageant as part of Work Programme (this is even worse than the byline makes it sound. Much worse).

For fans of the tax code; I mentioned this in a linklist about a year ago - Edith Windsor just won her DOMA tax case. Do not mess with rich old lesbians.

OKAY ONE MORE PICTURE (from Daisy's Tuesday Funnies, which includes a lot of other awesome stuff):

life tools: 750words

https://750words.com/ <--Ting found this a couple of weeks ago and we've been trying to keep at it ever since. From its About page:

Morning pages are three pages of writing done every day, typically encouraged to be in "long hand", typically done in the morning, that can be about anything and everything that comes into your head. It's about getting it all out of your head, and is not supposed to be edited or censored in any way. The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day.

So what is the point? I dunno, so I spent 750 words trying to figure it out. Other times, I've outlined novellas I've not writing, written character monologues I'm not going to post, hacked language around, wasted words on purpose or farmed them jealously all day. It's a shift in thinking for me because my words are about the only thing I own that I don't habitually think of as disposable. I think it's a good thing. Most days, it's worth the time. What I don't know is if it'll have any positive effect on either writing or blogging, but I'll let you know how it goes. It's something to get your mind out of bed for.