Tumblr Code.

Support the BBC for having a trans character in recent episodes of 'Doctor Who'

Apparently the BBC (UK) has had 144 complaints about a recent episode of Doctor Who because it contained an openly trans character.

I've made a complaint to the BBC that there weren't enough transgender characters in Doctor Who. I would love if 144 other people did the same thing. Here's the link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint

(For your easy reference: "The Star Beast" aired on 25/11/2023 on BBC One, and the trans character is called Rose.)

Please note that the complaint form asks for your UK postcode, so only UK folks can join in with this - but if you suspect you might have any UK-based followers, maybe give us a reblog to boost the signal?

Reply when you've done it, so I can keep track of us!

Here's my complaint:

I recommend:

Avoid sarcasm or irony. Assume your post will be taken literally. If you are clearly joking or being mean you will be ignored or misunderstood.

Include some gratitude/appreciation. It's pretty great that they included a trans woman in a positive way, and they should know that they have explicit support for that.

Legendary U Washington bookseller Duane Wilkins is drowning in medical debt

Nearly every sf writer who's ever toured the west coast knows Duane - he's the encyclopedically knowledgeable sf buyer for the U Washington Bookseller, who has organized some of the best sf signings in Seattle history. He's a force of nature.

He's also broke. A two-week hospital stay left him drowning in medical debt - despite being insured! - and now he's being threatened by a collection agency.

Now, Duane is forced into participating in one of the most barbaric of contemporary American rituals, fundraising to cover his medical debt. He's raised $6k of the $10k he needs (I just pitched in $100).

If you can afford to help out someone who's done so much for our community, please kick Duane whatever you can spare.

All throughout childhood, while my peers were socializing and making friends, I studied the blade read so many books that I am now almost legally blind, which left me with vast and deeply instinctual understanding of English grammar - and next to no ability to explain how it actually works. Friends will often ask me to proofread their writing and then get very mad when I say things like, "You need to completely reverse this sentence and cut this clause entirely; no, I'm sorry, i don't know why, I just know that the way it is now ITCHES 😭"

Now, what I want to see is a fantasy story where this plays out with MAGICAL grammar. Someone from a backwater town deeply steeped in folk magic arrives at Wizard Uni where all their fellow students are like "What do you mean, we should add another '𝞯∘⋇𝞿' to the incancation because it 'sounds better'? What do you mean, 'it could just be a regional thing'?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'THIS SPELL JUST FEELS LIKE IT NEEDS A LIVE RAT'????"

At Ebooks Direct: OWL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

Warning! Contains:

New York City

The Tree in Rockefeller Plaza

Young Wizards grown up (okay, in their mid-twenties, be that way.)

Gay wizards in bed (Just two of them. But you may be able to guess which ones...)

Dolly Parton (singing)

2020 behaving very badly

...and one little Owl who's mad as hell and NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE.

Please note that this is your last chance to obtain the ebook at its present low price before all the prices at the Ebooks Direct store go up on January 1st.

Get Owl Be Home For Christmas

This work also appears in Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal, as well as a standalone volume in the "All The Wizardry" bundle.*

...As usual, with regret, please note that due to Brexit, Ebooks Direct can no longer sell directly to UK-based readers. (More details here.) However, if you're UK-based, you can obtain the Kindle ebook of Owl... or the print or ebook versions of Interim Errantry 2 from Amazon.co.uk.

And a minor side note: last week's medical expenses took something of an unplanned-for bite out of local finance, so reblogs would be welcome just now, if you feel inclined. Please & thank you!

*Now that I think of it, it's also in the 2023 Pride Month package. This little bird really gets around... :)

maskerade (1995)

We’re extending the Ebooks Direct “Get Our Whole Store For $44″ Sale by 5 hours

…Because we can. (And because it looks like some extra people will be wandering in due to an unexpected crossposting on Twitter…)

This means it’ll be closing down at 23:59 Irish time / 12:59 Hawai’ian time, today, 1 September 2022.

For those of you who haven’t seen them before, the details are below:

Just for Tumblr users – for the next 5 hours or so (until 12:59 Hawai’ian time on 1 September 2022), get 20% off the price of the already-discounted package containing the entire contents of our Ebooks Direct store. With the extra discount, that’s $44 for the whole thing!

I had some murmurs in my ask box over the last ten days or so from folks who were sad that they’d missed out on earlier iterations of this sale, for one reason or another. And when I mentioned this to @petermorwood, in his usual direct way he shrugged and said, “Well, why not just do it again?”

…And frankly, that made perfect sense. Some people are getting ready to start one version or another of the New School Year, and might possibly enjoy having some extra reading to distract them. And other people might just want to top up their electronic TBR piles on the relatively-cheap. And who knows how many other reasons people might have. So why not?

Therefore: if you’d like to avail yourself of this genuinely around-the-bend bargain price* on the whole-store 35-book package, just go to this URL, put  one of the “I Want Everything You’ve Got” packages in your shopping  basket (make sure to tell the page which ebook format you want/need:  Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iBooks/Apple or generic .epub), and then proceed to the checkout. (The fully discounted price won’t show until you get there: this is just the way the store behaves when we’ve already got an across-the-board discount running.)

In the checkout page you’ll find the store has applied your extra discount  automatically, like this:

…Then you just make the payment by whatever method you prefer (we do credit cards via Stripe, as well as PayPal), and the store emails you the download links for the files. (If you need assistance with getting the files into your e-reader or app, we’ve got a page at the store with useful advice on that.) And  from over here I will applaud you for your general wonderfulness, and get back to work.

(BTW, in  case anybody accidentally just goes straight to the main product link  [which doesn’t auto-attach the discount], the added-discount code is EVERY24. That way  if it’s missing from the field in the checkout page, you can put it in  yourself.)

Anyway: Enjoy, all! And if this offer’s of no  interest to you, would you kindly consider reblogging it for the attention of others  who might like to know about this? Those reblogs really help.** Please & Thank You! :)

(Oh, by the way—! UK people, one [sad] thing:  we can’t include you in this offer… please forgive us. Due to Brexit  we can no longer sell direct into the UK. Details on that are here. …My apologies for that.)  :(

*Because seriously, $44 for 35 ebooks isn’t too bad…

**Especially since I don’t really care to Blaze posts like this. Properly speaking, Blaze is for shitposts. (Like the Duckie of Light.)  :)

The Huffington Post

Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong

For decades, the medical community has ignored mountains of evidence to wage a cruel and futile war on fat people, poisoning public percepti

"For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism—a body-wide starvation response that blasts you with hunger hormones and drops your internal temperature until you rise back to your highest weight. Keeping weight off means fighting your body’s energy-regulation system and battling hunger all day, every day, for the rest of your life.

The second big lesson the medical establishment has learned and rejected over and over again is that weight and health are not perfect synonyms. Yes, nearly every population-level study finds that fat people have worse cardiovascular health than thin people. But individuals are not averages: Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Meanwhile, about a quarter of non-overweight people are what epidemiologists call “the lean unhealthy.” A 2016 study that followed participants for an average of 19 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fit fat people."

A surprising article to find on the Huffington post. I think, especially towards the end, there's still a saturation of healthism and diet talk (just of the "clean eating" variety), but the information about weight discrimination is absolutely on point, especially within the medical field ignoring decades of research.

Not only do we know that weight loss isn't sustainable or possible, we also know that weight discrimination kills, in a myriad of ways. If you actually care about "health" then start unlearning your weight bias NOW and realize that fat people are just people who are a different shape.

And this article doesn't even touch on "the obesity paradox"(the fact that fat people survive heart attacks and injuries BETTER THAN thin people) or the fact that dieting, especially "yo-yo dieting," is a better predictor for heart disease than weight, and that many of the fat people who have cardiovascular diseases have a long history of dieting that (understandably) didn't work.

encouraged to rb but fatphobes will just be blocked.

Not the most relevant but what's funny is how "Swype" is what some of us use as the word for swipe typing on mobile despite the actual Swype keyboard having been defunct/dead for years now (it is actually literally incompatible/does not work on Android 14 now 😩)

this can't be true can it

Peter Morwood

I am so sorry to have to tell you all about this. None of you, I suspect, will ever have any idea how sorry.

I am in utter shock and terrible pain to have to inform everyone that our friend, my dear husband and creative partner of nearly forty years, Peter Morwood, passed away suddenly early this morning after a brief illness that as late as yesterday (when his doctor saw him) had seemed to be on the mend.

I'm not in any position to say much more about this situation now, as you'll understand my current mental state is not up to the task. (I keep expecting to wake up from a bad dream, but it shows no sign of breaking.) I will let people know more about this in coming days.

There will be a postmortem shortly to determine the exact cause of his death. I'll share what details of this are appropriate as they become clear.

Meanwhile in the short term I'm very much going to need assistance with the expenses that in the days that follow will inevitably surround what's happened. For those people who want to assist, please feel free to use the Ko-Fi account here, and simply tag the associated messages, etc, "P expenses". ETA: Please choose the Stripe payment option at Ko-Fi rather than PayPal, as PP seems to be having some kind of obscure difficulties at the moment. I have disconnected PayPal until this is resolved.

My love will wait for me, I know, however long it takes. He's never minded waiting. (the saddest smile) My job now is to make sure he's not forgotten while I go on.

Meanwhile, can I just say to all of of you: I thank you all ahead of time for all the support and fondness for Peter that I know so many of you will express. He'd blush over it, I know. (He always did.) Please forgive me for being unable to do much in the way of answering messages, just now, in the wake of having to get to grips with this sudden and awful change in my world.

But also let me say, so urgently: Hug your loved ones now, while you can. Eventually a day will come when, expected or not, your opportunities end.

Thanks, friends.

--DD