Bad news in the UK

Bad news from the UK. Hate crimes:

The report from the University of Leicester's Centre for Hate Studies says that some 35,000 hate crimes towards people in the LGBT communities go unreported every year, motivated by the fears of being outed, negative experiences with authorities and the normalisation of victimisation.

— Hate crimes 'routine' for Britain's LGBT community, report warns, Blathnaid Healy @ Mashable

STDs:

Large increases in diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) were seen last year in men who have sex with men (MSM), according to figures published today.

— Gonorrhoea and syphilis on the rise as STI diagnoses soar among gay and bisexual men, Tim Moynihan @ The Independent

Jurassic World, the one that sticks out.

Spoilers for Jurassic World, The Strangely Cruel And Unusual Death In Jurassic World Devin Faraci @ Birth.Movies.Death.

Discusses one of the more gratuitously violent scenes in Jurassic World, one that sticks out in a film filled with edited cut-aways. One of the things I appreciated about Interstellar was that while every death could have been a drawn-out dramatic affair, most of them happen quickly but unambiguously.

Seasons of Saturn

— Rings and Seasons of Saturn, Damian Peach/SEN @ APOD.

The long road to same-sex marriage

Same-sex marriage isn’t some overnight cause, some progressive novelty, especially not when it’s put in its proper context, as part of a struggle for gay rights that has been plenty long, patient and painful.

— Gay Marriage’s Moment, Frank Bruni @ New York Times

My soapbox: Defense of marriage was never just about marriage, it was a legal rationale for a broad spectrum of discrimination and opposition to same-sex relationships. Which is why it was passed in states like Indiana where a handful of employers were considering limited domestic-partnership benefits.

Kirby's Lord of Light, Colored

Colored Kirby concept for Lord of Light. The movie didn't get off the ground, but the images were used as props for the Argo hoax. More at "Behold The Psychedelic Glory Of Jack Kirby's Argo Art, In Color At Last," James Whitbrook @ io9

Writing a book in emacs

Emacs is a great tool for book editing and writing. I used reStructuredText text but Markdown, ASCIIDoc, Docbook or any number of formats would work equally well. Emacs’s ediff is a powerful diffing tool that made it possible for me to track the changes made by the proofreader and selectively apply, but also edit, the changes she made before committing them to the original manuscript. I think that feature alone made it worth writing it in Emacs.

— How to write a book in Emacs, Mickey Petersen @ Mastering Emacs

A nice description of how reStructuredText and pandoc can be used in a publishing workflow.

From the Devi Gita

I am the Lord and the Cosmic Soul; I am myself the Cosmic Body.
I am Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra, as well as Gauri, Brahmi, and Vaishnavi

I am the sun and the stars, and I am the Lord of the stars.
I am the various species of beasts and birds; I am also the outcaste and thief.

I am the evildoer and the wicked deed; I am the righteous person and the virtuous deed
I am certainly female and male, and asexual as well.

And whatever thing, anywhere, you see or hear,
That entire thing I pervade, ever aiding inside it and outside.

— Devi Gita, verses 3.13 – 3.16, C. Mackenzie Brown, translator (Amazon Link)