melannen | (no subject)

Today is the day that Americans celebrate by having uncomfortable political conversations! \o/

Two different kinds of uncomfortable political conversations: the first exemplified by the fact that I have sworn to walk out of family dinner the minute someone endorses Donald Trump. (I don't *think* they will - we have enough different views that we're pretty skilled at being apolitical - but I'm not sitting through it or fighting them if it starts, so. If they just put on the football instead I'm going to be sitting in the corner reading Check Please! slash on my phone.)

The second exemplified by the fact that I put up a Books by Native American Authors display at the library for the end of this month. (It's getting way less checkouts than the "How To Bake Pies" one the other librarian put up, but thus is the way of things. It also contains literally every book by a Native American author ~~who isn't Michael Dorris~~ that I could find in the library, which says volumes on its own.)

Anyway, in the spirit of the second, have some podcast recs:

I got onto otipêyimisiw-iskwêwak kihci-kîsikohk (Métis In Space) via a rec from

sara, and it is now one of my favorite podcasts. Every other week two Métis women, Molly and Chelsea, plus the occasional special guest, tipsily dismember a SFnal movie, TV show, or video that features Indigenous people in it. Also they occasionally get confusing dispatches from their future selves who live in a spaceship above a decolonized North America. It's the kind of podcast I like best - the kind that feels like a couple of fans have just invited you into their living room to chat - and is really smart and really compassionate and really fun. Also if you like Canadian things it is possibly the most beautifully Canadian thing I have ever encountered.

I have made very few decisions regarding my Hugo nominations yet, but otipêyimisiw-iskwêwak kihci-kîsikohk is definitely going on there for fancast, and you all should try it so you can decide whether to nominate it too. To start I suggest the recent episode The Manitou, where they watch a terrible 70s horror movie that they end up being unexpectedly fond of. Or the slightly older episode Knights of Cydonia, which is a music video that easy to watch in advance if you want to know what they're talking about, and was also taped while one of them was literally in labor - they have to stop for contractions a few times - which makes it possibly the most hardcore podcast ever.

Another podcast I have recently started listening to is Archeological Fantasies, which I don't know that I wholeheartedly recommend: I listen to it because I will listen to well-informed people make fun of the Bimini Road and the Newark Holy Stones and their ilk for as long as you can let me, but the hosts do sometimes get on my nerves, often with that sort of unconsciously arrogant PhD-knows-best kind of elitism that makes you understand why people cling to their antiscience beliefs. But that said it's mostly good and they are trying to be fair spokespeople for science (I just have high standards for public skepticism) and if you, too, will happily listen to hours of intelligent people calling out Ancient Aliens as idiotic, it's fun.

But there was a recent episode that stepped away from their usual format, and that one I do recommend heartily. It's Dr. Fader telling the story of The Legend of the Lighthouse. The Lighthouse isn't an actual lighthouse; it's an oddly-named historical site where he's been working for decades. I won't go into detail about it because he tells the story really well and it was better unspoiled, but it was a lost town that had attached a beautiful legend about a mixed-race community in the early 19th century that turns out to almost entirely verifiably true, and the true story comes out better than the legend, and made me cry, and that kind of history needs to be better known. So you should listen to that episode.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm reading 1491 by Charles Mann, which is about the Americas before colonization. I swear I didn't time it to coincide with Thanksgiving! But it's brilliant -- maybe the more fascinating, elegantly assembled nonfiction book I've read in years. I kind of want to fling it at everybody currently obsessing over Hamilton and waiting impatiently in a library hold queue for their turn with the Chernow biography.

I've heard really good things about that book!

(I considering putting my Hamilton review in this entry but decided that's gonna need its own post.)

Ooh, looking forward to your Hamilton review.

(I meant 'most' up there, not 'more.' Gah.)

I think it would be great to put them up for a Hugo; I nominated them for the Tiptree, myself, because you haven't got to be a member to do that.

I don't think I will ever bother again unless I'm actually going to Worldcon, but it's been fun so far. Has anything non-text-based ever won the Tiptree? Somehow I thought that was just for books.

Well, I don't know, but I thought it was worth mentioning. They do say it's for genre criticism along gender axes, which this is, so I thought why not.

It certainly seems like it ought to be a good fit.

Maybe we should start handing out our own genre awards. All those racist windbags are doing it....;-)

Podcasting while in labour is HELLA HARDCORE.

SO HARDCORE. (She's not in active labor, she's in "go home and come back to the hospital when the contractions come more often" labor, but STILL.)

(...the baby guest stars on all the episodes after that. :D )

Edited 2015-11-27 14:16 (UTC)

Thank you for these recs omgggg. They sound completely up my alley!!

I hope you like them!

I was going to make a post about the Lighthouse episode too, but I didn't get around to it! Metis in Space sounds amazing, brb, downloading them all.

It was so good! So unexpectedly good, from the summary I wasn't thinking I'd particularly like it at all. I want to get my hands on the books now. (Especially the epic poem.)

Metis in Space is great.