Sidetracks - April 24, 2025

[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. Scientists were able to take pictures of a baby colossal squid!

2. This Unisex Hanfu Sewing Pattern looks really good! (Hanfu are historical chinese clothing)

Renay

3. Amazon is once again being gross re: Indie Bookstore Day by putting its own huge book sale in front of April 26. Barnes & Noble is doing something similar with their pre-order sale. I don't dislike the idea of their pre-order sale, but am disappointed in them for when they choose to have it. They're a huge megaphone in the book community. They could simply not choose the weeks before indie bookstore day.

So, anyway, bookshop.org will let you select an indie bookstore to support and buy books online. There's regular books and ebooks, too. Libro.fm is a great alternative to Audible, which is an Amazon product that doesn't allow its titles to be requested by libraries, locking away audiobook access for those titles from tons of readers. If your city has a good indie bookstore, support them this weekend with a purchase and/or a preorder. If you need some recs of books I like: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson, Finder by Suzanne Palmer, or Ocean's Godori by Elaine U. Cho. If you're looking for some preorders, here are books I've preordered so far: The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott and A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna.

4. The Hugo Awards Voting Packet is available!

5. I heard some bells and it was true! Jenny did a link round up!

6. My efforts to convince everyone to come watch my one-woman Youtube soap opera have not been fruitful, but now there's a perfect compilation episode that can help new folks catch up! It's a family drama about two young families and their extremely toxic matriarch and how the wife of one of Toxic Matriarch's kids is trying to make the family and extended network happiness happen, to…mixed success. Anyway, I love it so much. The writing is great.

7. If you need something heartwarming, there's a young woman on TikTok whose favorite crayon is Dandelion, which was discontinued years ago. She has a whole incredible collection of crayons and associated paraphernalia. Recently, Crayola brought back some discontinued crayons and brought her to New York to be part of the celebration. This is the kind of promo I want from companies.

8. Dinosaur quilt? Yes! Dinosaur quilt!