Les Liens du Lundi

Short essays, current affairs, hot takes:

• Dr Phil Metzger, a Scientist On Twitter, talks through the physics of water fountains.
  
• Wilson (the_sidecarist) offers a thread on polyamory (aimed at gay men)
  

  Because so many gays love to post shitty opinions on open relationships and/or polyamory, now I’m going to post some thoughts/takes of my own, as someone who has been in those relationships for 20 years. Thread:

  — Wilson 🏳️‍🌈 (@the_sidecarist) February 21, 2019

  
  
  Something in there doesn't quite sit right with me, but I haven't yet figured out what.
  
• Lucy Fisher (The Times UK) reports that the gatwick drone crisis is believed to be an airport insider's work
  
• The British Library will likely have to suspend public access to the Spare Rib archive as a result of Brexit (EU copyright law will no longer apply to works of unknown authorship).

Longreads - essay, memoir, natural history, other

• Hannah McCann and Lucy Nicholls (Inside Story), Gender Troubles, on the boogeyman of 'gender ideology' and disciplinary/ideological divides within feminism:
  

  A more generous reading of both the utopian and the pragmatic politics of many gender theorists could reduce the intensity of the reaction among gender-critical feminists. While gender theorists undermine some of the easier conceptual givens of some earlier feminisms, such as the reality of biological sex, they are not denying that we live in a world where binary ideas shape opportunities and expectations. ( Lived experiences are messier than neat theoretical divisions )

  
  I'm a little skeptical of what might be glossed over by 'would not require complete consensus' (who's going to be asked to sacrifice their dignity in the name of pragmatics? Not white cis women), but otherwise, this is a sensible piece.
  
• Gary Pearce (Overland) reviews Jeff Sparrow's 'Trigger Warnings: Political Correctness and the Rise of the Right', and it looks like it might actually be a decent journalistic-historical book on how the right came to position itself as the bastion of free speech. Given the title, I'm skeptical, but... I might give it a shot. I used to like Jeff Sparrow's work.
  
• Fransjohan Praetorius, for The Conversation UK, offers a historical explainer on Conversation camps in the south african (Boer) war.
  
• Sonja Erikanien (University of Edinburgh Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society), On Being, Unquestionably, A Woman (piece on the persecution of Caster Semanya and the regulation of women's sports).
  
• Sarah Kurchak (Far and Wide), 12 Tips for Travelling with Depression. A bit fluffy but much of it rings true for me.
  
• Alexandra (Sugoi.com) interviews Erica Friedman (founder of Ozacu, Yuricon, and ALC publishing) on the genre history of yuri manga. There's a spanish version at below the English, too.
  
• Gay Lynch (Meanjin blog), On Decluttering, Narratives, and Stuff.
  

  Raised in a peripatetic family that moved every two years from one old, stone, bank premise to another, we were adept at fast transitions. We arranged the same furniture, pictures, ornaments and vases in the new space and added fresh flowers. Within two days of arrival our living space signified our ongoing family identity, one that relied on heritage and the slow accretion of material things by annual gift giving. ( This essay is not, however, just about decluttering )

Items of practical interest:

• Judy at The Woks of Life has a piece on how to set up a steamer which finally made sense of steamers for me! Including how to use them to reheat food, which I expect will be very useful to me in Japan.

I have a LOT more links stored, but I think I'll put them off to Thursday, spare your reading lists.

Read anything cool on The Internets lately, folks?