Blog archive
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I pay for membership of the World Science Fiction Society, so that I can nominate and vote in the Hugo Awards each year. I keep meaning to blog my noms and votes, so here we go…
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In reporting about Graham Linehan’s conviction for criminal damage, the BBC used offensive language to describe the 17-year-old victim of this crime
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book recs
LGBTQ+
Book review: “Shy Trans Banshee” by Tony Santorella
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Book review: “Seven Recipes for Revolution” by Ryan Rose
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My memories of 7 July 2005
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The government has announced another transphobe as their preferred candidate to lead the “Equalities and Human Rights Commission”…
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Less than 6 months ago it was puberty blockers, now it’s the Supreme Court with some outrageous bullshit. So I’ve written to my MP again.
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The Northern Ireland executive has permanently banned the use of puberty-blockers to provide gender affirming care to trans adolescents. So I’ve written to my MP again.
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work
leadership
mental health
SWANA politics
A couple of people messaged me about the mental health impacts of watching Israeli aggression and genocide
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work
leadership
race
After a scary weekend, I drafted a note to the team I’m helping lead
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On this day 30 years ago I attended my first ever Pride. Straight cis people will never fully understand the previously-unknown sense of belonging this young gay man felt on realising he was surrounded by thousands of kindred queers.
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weeknotes
work
LGBTQ+
TV and film
Missed a week due to Covid; back now, with So. Many. Meetings.
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weeknotes
work
Why do 4-day weeks always feel just as long as 5-day weeks?
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weeknotes
work
A 4th week of weeknotes means I should probably start coming up with better summaries than this, I guess…
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weeknotes
work
book recs
A 3rd week of weeknotes is positively miraculous!
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weeknotes
work
A 2nd week of weeknotes, already exceeding my previous efforts!
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weeknotes
work
Let’s try again at getting into the habit of writing weeknotes
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Harry Nicholas’s first book, an autobiographical work, contains an impressive amount of interesting and considered thought in its 224 pages. At its core, the book is an eloquent narrative of his journey from one relationship to another, with transformative self-discovery in between.
But, of course, it is so much more than that, as any such tale always is.
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I’ve seen this original tweet a lot in the last few days and it has brought me joy every time.
For two reasons. Firstly, Wickes didn’t need to go all-in like this with corporate allyship — and then to back it up with a LinkedIn post from their COO.
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I’m sure most readers will have seen some of the recent transphobia, now emanating from the BBC, as well as the rest of mainstream British journalism. So I made a complaint to the BBC, making sure to reference the appropriate BBC Guidelines. (It’s a lot of them.)
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2021 has been A Lot™ — somehow even more so than 2020 has been. Thankfully, 2021 started with 4 books I had excitedly pre-ordered, having seen them talked about online, which made me realise that reading queer characters was making me feel better. And in 2021, we all need to feel better.
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Lots of conversations about diversity, equity, inclusion and representation have been promoted as a result of one advert in Sainsbury’s 2020 Christmas campaign featuring a Black father singing about gravy to his daughter…
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I watch a lot of films and TV and, like a good little autist, I make lists. So here’s all the period films I watched in 2017 and 2018. But then didn’t get round to polishing it into actual blog posts. Apparently I watch a lot of period works, so period TV is in a separate post.
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LGBTQ+
Content note: This article includes a pixellated image of the aftermath of a hate crime and descriptions of the attack.
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I’ve been keeping track of the TV and film I’ve been watching, but then didn’t get round to polishing it into actual blog posts. This post lists the highlights of the period TV shows I’ve seen in the last 18 months, with period films coming soon in a separate post.
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I’ve been keeping track of the TV and film I’ve been watching, but then didn’t get round to polishing it into actual blog posts. There’s a piece on zombie films and a long piece on Queer cinema. Originally, I had a single post for speculative fiction, but I’m sure noone’s surprised that I watched rather a lot of that, so I split it up.
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censorship
Chalking up another 2 victims of the Tumblrpocalypse. Content note: This post includes suggestive images of adult male torsos.
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I’ve been keeping track of the TV and film I’ve been watching, but then didn’t get round to polishing it into actual blog posts. I soft-launched the piece on zombie films a few days ago and the rest will come shortly. This post lists the highlights of the Queer-themed works I’ve seen in the last 18 months.
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I’ve been keeping track of the TV and film I’ve been watching, but then didn’t get round to polishing it into actual blog posts. I’m a fan of apocalyptic fiction — and zombie fiction in pticlr. This article talks through some of the zombie fiction I’ve enjoyed in the last coupla years.
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was asking for disabled people who work in tech who might be interested in blogging for her Tech Disability Project during October, which is National Disability Employment Awareness Month in the USA. I found out about Natasha’s project when she posted on the Disabled in Tech Slack.
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One of the many things I love about the LGBTQ in Technology Slack is that it’s got a shedload of people one can ask for advice on just about any topic.
Last week, one of the parents on the group asked about book recommendations to help her 5yo daughter become a better, more considerate classmate to a member of her kindergarten who is on the autism spectrum.
Because the list of links that resulted seems like it might be useful to other people, I’ve copied the recommendations into a blogpost.
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LGBTQ+
representation
parenting
Yesterday on the LGBTQ in Technology Slack, Franzi posted a screenshot they’d seen of a Facebook post with an adorable story. I make no promises as to whether it ever happened, I just found the story so cute that I had to share it more widely. The text was helpfully transcribed by Cable, another Slack user.
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Storify has announced that they are closing down, so I am moving the handful of Storify stories I curated to here.
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advertising
representation
Last night (Wed 29 Nov 2017) was the Campaign BIG awards and I thought a few of my favourites from the awards shortlist were worth a share to some of my less advertising-focussed friends.
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So I wrote up some recommendations of what I’d been watching, so figured I might like to log my viewing habits better through 2017. I’ve not included the day-to-day stuff Jen and I always watch, just the things I watch on my own.
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I mentioned on Facebook that I was enjoying watching Occupied, a Norwegian political thriller, and several friends asked for other recommendations. So here — in no particular order — is what I’ve been watching on Amazon Prime Instant Video this year.
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I mentioned on Facebook that I was enjoying watching Occupied, a Norwegian political thriller, and several friends asked for other recommendations. So here — in no particular order — is what I’ve been watching on Netflix UK this year.
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NHS England is consulting on the provision of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV; the consultation ends next Friday (23 September 2016).
The team at United for PrEP, a collection of HIV/AIDS charities and service organisations, put together a response guide to help people reply to the consultation. My answers below are heavily based on their guide; you can provide your own response using their online form.
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After last year’s drama in the European Parliament about “freedom of panorama”, the EU is consulting on how the law should change.
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Medium
design
One of Medium’s designers, Marcin Wichary, wrote several helpful pieces explaining the changes that have come with the recent Medium Update. In particular, he wrote at length about UI changes made in order to make Medium work better for the majority of readers — who access the site on smartphones and tablets, rather than on larger screens.
One thing that seems to have changed, but I can’t see mentioned anywhere, is that I can’t set an image to be a full-bleed background with a heading over it anymore.
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John Benham Clements has written eloquently on the recent change to marginal notes, linked as a response to Ev Williams’s original piece about Why Medium Notes are different and how to use them well from April 2013. This piece is prompted by that one; you might like to read it first.
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European politics
copyfight
Severe restrictions to Freedom of Panorama rejected in the EU vote, but issues remain. Here’s what just happened.
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On 9 July 2015, the European Parliament will vote on whether to abolish our right to freely take and share photographs, videos and drawings of buildings and works of public art. Two weeks ago, I wrote about the impending threat, but legislative cogs turn rapidly and we need an update.
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On 9 July 2015, the European Parliament will vote on whether to abolish our right to freely take and share photographs, videos and drawings of buildings and works of public art.
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UK politics
surveillance
Last week, the Home Secretary Theresa May announced in Parliament that she was introducing emergency legislation to require companies to store metadata about our communications — our phone calls, text messages and Internet use. That legislation — the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill — is due to be rushed through Parliament, with cross-party support, this week. It’s not an emergency and this DRIP bill is neither business-as-usual nor uncontentious
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surveillance
So I’ve been clearing out my filing cabinet, which I’ve barely even opened in the four years we’ve been living in Woking. This means I’ve been reminded of a bunch of papers and references I compiled for campaigning — mainly against ID cards. Now I don’t need all of these in hardcopy, so I’m looking them all up electronically. As I wanted to have them as reference, I figure that other people might also like the references, so why not put together a blogpost at the same time.
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mental health
Another example of the fun I have with mental (and, this time, physical) health.
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HIV and AIDS
UK politics
open letter
Here in the United Kingdom, our Parliament is currently debating an Immigration Bill. It left the House of Commons last week, but not before a group of 18 Conservative MPs attempted to amend the bill to prevent the entry into the UK of people infected with HIV or hepatitis B. As my own MP was one of the cosponsors of the amendment, I figured I should write to him, in an attempt to educate him further.
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LGBTQ+
representation
TV and film
Or: Why Hollywood needs to stop ignoring us LGBT+ types and give us more screen time
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mental health
So, last night, all the signals failed between Waterloo and Clapham, meaning trains were completely fucked; a friend of ours over the road spent an hour to travel the eight-minute journey between the two.
For over 20 years now, I have suffered from panic disorder. If you’ve never experienced a panic attack, you probably can’t understand the crippling nature of them.
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mental health
Some things I need to remember about working in a deadline-based industry.
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surveillance
UK politics
European politics
I shared a blogpost to Facebook entitled “Dear ICO: This is why web developers hate you” with the comment
Excellent rant explaining why the EU Privacy Directive (the “Cookie law”) may well suck … but it’s the ICO who’ve made the Internet industry’s lives hell of late. Sheer simple incompetence.
A friend’s comment prompted me finally to get round to blogging about my thoughts on the EU “Cookie Directive”, why I think it’s such a terrible piece of legislation and why I believe the ICO handled the situation shamefully incompetently.
