Sprinkles Around the Web 1/14-1/27/11

Sprinkles from around the web

A collection of interesting links that I found around the web. Read and enjoy.

Me

Erica in her new dress
Because sometimes I just need to buy and wear a pretty red dress

Environment

Polar bear swims for nine straight days in search of ice Polar bears swim, but they don’t swim as far as this one. Why did this bear swim so far? It couldn’t find ice. Yep, the real effects of global warming.

Squirrels Around the World There are some freaking adorable squirrels out there.

Fandom

The Rape of Inara: On heroines, consent, and women’s sexuality

I am now gleefully happy that “Firefly” got canceled. Not that I wasn’t before, but now? I can almost forgive FOX for canceling all those TV shows if it means that Inara was never raped. Also, TV, can you stop having the women with sexuality be raped or otherwise punished for having it while pretending to be edgy for having women with ‘unconventional’ sexualities?

Resistance, a Star Trek: The Next Generation fanvid I love this video so much. It’s amazing.

‘Dark Knight Rises’: Anne Hathaway will be Catwoman, Tom Hardy is Bane Okay, she’ll actually be Selina Kyle as who knows if she’ll be Catwoman in this one…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Hush” Pillow This is awesome.

J.H. Williams III addresses Batwoman delay That’s right more Batwoman delays. Makes me sad, but I know it’ll be an instant favorite of mine. (Yes, I have that much faith.) I just can’t wait.

Industry Interview: A Talk with Daniel Ketchum from Marvel A really awesome interview with Marvel editor Ketchum. He seems like a very cool and likable guy.

NBC Picks Up David E. Kelley’s ‘Wonder Woman’ Huzzah. I cannot wait. Wonder Women deserves to be part of the big three and that includes seeing her on the small screen. Go, Wonder Woman, go.

DC Replaces Comics Code Approval with Own Rating System Good for them. But I really hope one of these days it just becomes standard for comic book stores to have a kids’ section, so we don’t have to put ratings on comics. You know, like how there are no ratings on books.

The Baby-sitters Club: Where Are They Now? As someone who read these books as a child, this is hilarious.

Feminism

My Experiences as a Female Software Engineer I identified so much this piece. Except that I didn’t have the encouragement that Jean did. Or the persistence to keep with computer science.

To all the girls who envy my life

It’s the persistent symptom of a society that still insists sexual desirability is a woman’s duty, and wealth is the most important hallmark of success. A young woman who is desirable is a young woman who wields power, and that power is often bestowed in the form of cold, hard cash.

I’m 27 and I Love My Training Bra I so relate to this. Also what a simple solution that I hadn’t thought of. Not like that I like wearing bras.

• If you haven’t watch the Feminist Rapper’s videos, I highly recommend them.

Episode 2: Real Ladies Fight Back and Episode 3: This Is What A Feminist Looks Like. Made of WIN.

Finance

E-mails Suggest Bear Stearns Cheated Clients Out of Billions How much does this not surprise me? Yuck. When are these criminals going to jail?

GeekGirlCon

Get your passes, and I’ll see you there.

• GeekGirlCon’s Buffy Summers’ 30th Birthday Parties went swimmingly. Check out Kristina Horner’s video (you can see me cut the cake) and a couple of my photos: Buffy’s cake and cupcakes with stakes. The one in Seattle was a blast.

GeekGirlCon: Power to the Geek Girls A great article on GeekGirlCon and how we’re a startup and reaching out to Seattle’s geek girl community. (Also, I’m interviewed in it. :D)

Announcing Special Guests: Greg Rucka and Jen Van Meter Hurrah, two of my favorite comic book writers Greg Rucka and Jen Van Meter will be at GeekGirlCon.

Announcing Special Guest: Gail Simone One of my favorite comic book writers Gail Simone is coming to GeekGirlCon! Awesome.

Marian Call Joins Special Guests at GeekGirlCon! Nerdy musician Marian Call will be performing her tunes at GeekGirlCon.

Inspiration

Tech Support – short comedy film A cute and hilarious story about a woman who falls in love with her tech support customer service rep.

‘Star Trek’s’ Nichelle Nichols on How Martin Luther King Jr. Changed Her Life Nichols tells one of the more classic and awesome Star Trek stories: how she once almost left the show (not awesome), but came back when Dr. King told her what an inspiration she was to black women (awesome).

Dear Sugar, The Rumpus Advice Column #63: The Magic of Wanting to Be On how we all want love and we all deserve to be loved.

On competence, confidence, pernicious socialization, recursion, and tricking yourself

In sexist societies, women get especially socialized to think we’re not as intellectually capable as we are, and to act self-deprecating about our abilities. In technical spaces where women are the minority, sexists dismiss our successes and concentrate on our missteps.

Not Searching for God in Bali How to find inspiration in a religious experience if you’re not religious yourself.

Splash Calendar 2011 by Tejal Patni The beautiful, dark fairy tales of the 21st century. I so want a copy.

Want: This Bad-To-The-Ass Octopus Armchair Yes, I want this too. Now.

Marketing

Celebrity Advertisements Not Really Working Did you pay that celebrity a whole bunch of money to endorse your product? It’s not worth it. Celebrities don’t convince people to buy products at a higher rate than non-celebrity ads. Regular people on the other hand, do.

My boyfriend doesn’t get me, but my deodorant does! Haha, so true about stupid things marketers do that real people don’t.

The Products We Hate Hilarious review of some of the new or popular products of 2010, which are complete bullshit. At least in comparison to how they’re being marketed.

Politics

New Hospital Visitation Rules in Effect New US federal regulations that prohibit hospitals from discriminating against visitors based on sexual orientation and gender identity take effect now. Know your rights.

Stimulus kept millions out of poverty, liberal group’s study says

The center found that the bill kept more than 4.5 million people out of poverty in 2009.

Ugandan LGBT Advocate Murdered; Had Been Named By “Hang Them” Tabloid This is horrifying and very sad.

Obama Administration Sued Over “Proxy Detention” The Obama Administration is detaining an American teenager in Kuwait, over his name. And not letting him come home.

U.S. Government Approves Comcast-NBC Merger If you think this belongs in tech, you are wrong. No, the U.S. government bowed to Comcast to let them take over even more of our media. So Comcast can try to take more of my money.

Race

Bollywood Bond Girl Furious Over Elle’s ‘Fair & Lovely’ Airbrushing Elle India makes Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai Bachchan look like a white woman with red hair instead of a brown woman with black hair. Disgusting, racist, and tacky.

Recipes (I want to make)

Science

Forensic DNA Test Can Decipher Criminals’ Hair Color Science is so amazing.

Antimatter caught streaming from thunderstorms on Earth Next stop, starships.

Sit. Stay. Parse. Good Girl! A dog knows 1,022 nouns. My dog will know 1,023. Once I convince Jason to let me get one.

• Zheng Lab – Bad Project (Lady Gaga parody)

Seattle

How happy are you? Sustainable Seattle kicks off local happiness initiative, asks community for input It’s good to know about happiness in your community, not just economic development.

Greenwood Market’s lease extended until June 2012 Yay for local supermarkets!

SEO

Google Sets Sights On Content Farms In 2011 A big problem with the natural search is double content and content farms churning out stories targeted at keywords, not targeted at being useful for people. Google is going to try to stop them from flooding search.

Social Media

Your Facebook Activity is Now an Ad Because they own all your content and anything they can monetize…

Scientific Proof Facebook is the Jersey Shore An interesting analysis of what stories are most shared and read on Facebook. Hint: Not anything with multi-syllabic words or a lot of words in general.

5 Questions To Ask Before Jumping Into Quora Thinking about using Quora? This is really great primer on what it’s good for.

UK Regulator To Crack Down On Paid Celeb Tweets I’m rather surprised this didn’t happen before now.

Technology

HOW TO: Optimize E-mail Marketing for Gmail’s Priority Inbox Google’s Priority Inbox is really handy for the user, but it may mean lower opening rates for your e-commerce newsletter.

Web Design

15 Must Have Features on an E-Commerce Site A great checklist.

0 Replies to “Sprinkles Around the Web 1/14-1/27/11”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *