Sidetracks - October 31, 2022

[helloladies]

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. For more links and commentary you can follow us on Twitter. You can also support us on Patreon.

Anna

1. In some nice urban planning news there’s new report form the Brookings Institute about Reducing poverty without community displacement

Jodie

2. A quick look into the number of British women with science fiction novels published since 2020 is sadly not encouraging.

3. Just a little update from my country's government. I am now old enough to have seen this terrible idea roll around at least three times. gal-dem also has a list of the terrible things Liz Truss, our new PM, has done over the course of her career. [Editor's note: Due to a delay between writing and posting, Liz Truss is no longer the PM.]

4. How To Start Writing Again may be of interest to some, especially as we approach November.

5. A thread about historical queues in London (complete with old pictures - yay).

6. This is a VERY cute behind the scenes Dr Who pic.

7. I think Twitter might be getting me into poetry via a Mary Oliver bot (?? what is happening). Anyway, I thought other 'definitely not into poetry' folk might be interested in this tweet about one of her (probably?) best known lines which, I have never explored and always until now believed to be a call to be extraordinary. Turns out nope (you can read the full poem in the second tweet).

8. I feel like Blockbuster is a new show to get excited about if you like nostalgia, Superstore, or just Randal Park.

KJ

9. James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader for over 40 years (from the original Star Wars in 1977 to a few lines in Rise of Skywalker) has given Lucasfilm/Disney permission to digitally reproduce his voice in projects going forward, starting with Obi-Wan Kenobi earlier this year. The trend of de-aging and creating digital actors is both fascinating and disturbing to me. Jones is 91, so I don't blame him for wanting to retire; I also don't blame Lucasfilm for wanting the option to keep using the character, and it would be hard for someone else to replicate such an iconic performance. But how, then, in this world of everything being based on old IP, do new actors and creators even get a shot? It troubles me a bit.

10. The Onion submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the first amendment right to parody. The full brief, written collaboratively by the newspaper's head writer and its legal team, is a 23-page masterpiece, simultaneously a very real legal document and filled with delicious snark. I hope it has the intended effect of influencing the Court and bringing more people's attention to threats to free speech.