Sidetracks - February 15, 2024

[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. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.

Anna

1. Happy Year of the Dragon! I’ve been enjoying watching clips from Chinese NYE galas. Here are a couple of dances that I especially enjoyed:

• Dragon!
• Fish!
• This one has amazing sapphic vibes

Renay

2. The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion is damning and depressing. As I hoped would happen upon finishing my readthrough of the whole report, the 2024 Hugo Administrator who was also involved in building political dossiers on potential 2023 finalists has resigned. I continue to feel deeply sad for the Chinese fans and professionals hurt by this, for the Glasgow team members who will have to clean up the mess left by their predecessors, and for all of us who invested so much time and care into this award.

More people need to read On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder (which I recommend because it's short and accessible), and then apply the lessons learned to: community service boards, commissions, book clubs, neighborhood associations, gaming guild groups, chess clubs, beekeeper clubs, political groups, and yes, any convention organizing team from the very top to the smallest, "why would anyone try shenanigans here?" committee of 1-3 people. Where there are people building any type of participatory infrastructure around a shared interest there is a risk for corruption unless people watch for it in themselves and their colleagues.

3. Even with everything happening, some of us are continuing with the 2024 Hugo Awards where nominations are currently open and there are passionate fans behind the scenes working hard to make them successful. I will cling to any scrap of excitement still available because lots of us worked really hard to build some solid rec lists of material that dropped in 2023. I'm pleased to say that the rec sheet got a boost from people interested in the new games/interactive media category. I appreciate the people who helped with including some board games, since the category is for them, too. As always, although the sheet is geared toward the Hugo Awards, for me it's always ended up being a lovely snapshot of all the niche things we love that often don't have a chance of making any award long list, much less a short list.

I don't know how many people will take part in the awards this year given the drama (I hope a record number, so the volunteers who run the Hugo Award process know we're behind them and giving them a chance to return a sense of normalcy to the awards). For those who participate, there's a resource to see if your 2023 favorites are eligible, a great discovery engine, and a place to leave things you loved for as long as the spreadsheets last. All the past spreadsheets can be found here.

4. Let's talk about Goodreads was a fascinating look into the problems the book site has had in the last few years.

I can list a thousand ways Goodreads could improve, but at the end of the day, it just won’t. I’m not debating the benefits of a website that allows you to catalog your library and rate books you like. I agree with Kreizman that, were Goodreads similar in design and behavior to the movie review platform Letterboxd, it would be a great resource for readers. But Amazon owns Goodreads, and Amazon has no interest in changing it.

You can’t put out a fire from inside the house, especially not when Jeff Bezos likes it warm.

So let’s step outside the house.

5. Happy Galentine’s Day: 10 Great Female Friendships in SFF by Jenny was a very nice hug-as-essay I really needed given *gestures to everything*

6. Sorry, appliance makers, I don't want to connect my stove to my Wi-Fi, even if it means I can use your handy app to control it. They act like connecting is beneficial to the consumer when it's literally about sucking up our data, selling it to a third party, and then using what they know to incessantly market to us. Part of me would love a SmartFridge that uses barcodes to tell me what's inside it on a little screen for grocery lists, but I don't need that with a side of surveillance. I'll continue to open the fridge doors for a few minutes if it means I can do so in relative privacy.

7. I've had this song on repeat for several weeks now. The vocals are pretty but it's the interesting mix in the background that scratches my brain.

Watch on YouTube