The list of nominees for the 2019 Hugos as been released (Link to List of Hugo Award Nominees) and in the Related Works category is AO3 (or An Archive Of Our Own). Jennifer Mace over on twitter did up a thread of reasons both historical and from the past year reasons to consider AO3 for Best Related Work. The one that probably surprised me the most was that they'd successfully migrated a half terabyte database, I knew the site was big, but 617gb big?

Now to go and peruse the rest of the list of nominees to fill out my already too massive To Be Read list.

Although this already got mentioned over in Other People's Fanfiction, it deserves notice here:

Ian McLeod has released two new chapters for Dead Bang, the official sequel to Drunkard's Walk II:

• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  

From Facebook:

Quote:Troubleshooter, welcome to Alpha Complex.

Friend Computer has granted you with a Red clearance. You now have the correct clearance to watch the Reveal Trailer.

Remember, Happiness is Mandatory.

The game will be released on PC and consoles in 2019, when Friend Computer feels like it.

It's John Cho -- the actor who played Sulu in the new Trek movies.

Also:

Quote:Luke Cage’s Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, a former cop turned captain of the Bebop and an old partner of Spike, while Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s Daniella Pineda will play the mysterious Faye Valentine ... Alex Hassell as Vicious

(Thought I'd try to make a thread for the weird and interesting science posts people run across)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30922800

Skrillex reduces mosquito bites.  "The electronic song "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" reduces host attack and mating success in the dengue vector Aedes aegypti."

I know that it popped up in the news on 4/1, but it is an actual paper.

RMH

Because I happened to post it over on the Eyrie Productions forum:




For the duration of the song, any Alces alces (moose in North America, elk in Eurasia) in a roadway in front of a vehicle in which Doug is traveling are safely transported to the side of the road, before the vehicle gets within eyesight of them.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon The Super Live opened at the Playstation Theatre on Times Square in New York on Friday.  I kid you not.  Judging by the information in this Theatermania article, it appears to be a Sera Myu musical made for the American stage as part of the 25th anniversary of the show.

SyFy Wire's review of the show is disturbingly effusive, and Theatermania's coverage is similarly gushing, but honestly, after watching the clip on this page, all I could do was cringe at the performance.  This is not going on my "must see" list, or even "see if I must".

It's April 1st, and we all know what that means...

Freefall:




General Protection Fault:

   


Four oldies-but-goodies, including the spaghetti tree.

Five Ottawa-specific pranks from days gone by. And this year's was that the Rideau Canal Skateway was going one-way only during peak hours. (The giveaway was that the "one way" was opposite the direction of mass travel in the morning and afternoon.)

It seems stange that after 65 million years we can look back and now find that exact moment that the world changed.  Not just a line in the sand, but physical evidence from the KT-day.

There's something monumentally fascinating about being able to point at an ancient dead fish and link its death specifically and precisely to this one moment. 

We can even say exactly how it died. It was a spectacularly shitty death - being washed up by a tsunami, drowned in burning glass, then buried in gravel and wreckage for 66 million years.

So, I've cleared with Bob about the official thing that will need to happen with my account here on the forum, it's just a matter of telling him to pull the trigger once this post is up for a week.

I'll just put it out right away: I'm transgender. I've been dealing with the intensifying struggle of living two ways for a number of years now. For the past year, I've been on the therapy track to get myself ready, and this last week was my first week being completely full-time. Since I'm now being myself at work, it's time to start shifting over the active parts of my online life over to the correct identity.

After the week is up, I'll have Bob change my username over to "LynnInDenver", which is the name I've been using actively on newer accounts I've opened. People can just call me "Lynn". My pronouns are she/her/hers.

My ability to deal with life has gotten so much better as a result of doing this, that I can't even get it across in just a text posting, just that it is best for me, and I have no regrets.