Jill Bearup

The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. It's amazing and brilliant and I love it and GNU Sir Terry . But if you're new to this world (WELCOME) you might be a bit...overwhelmed by your options. Do you go in chronological order? Where do you start? WHAT DO YOU DO??? Let me help, friend. Together we will discover your perfect reading order for the Discworld books. Chronological order of the Discworld  series is fine, and here's a link to the  Discworld novels publication order if that's your thing, but if you're feeling a bit overwhelmed, let's try it differently. Generic TL;DR recommendation: start with either  Wyrd Sisters  (witches and Shakespeare!)   or  Guards! Guards!  (detectoring!)   because they give you a good intro to the kind of plots and humour you can expect from Pratchett. If you like them, great! If not...maybe the series won't be your thing. But if you’d like a more customised selection, walk this way… YOU LIKE: M...

It's always nice to be appreciated, and Caroline Siede apparently appreciated my History of Fanfiction series ( particularly my defence of Mary Sue  which I entitled I Love You, Mary Sue because nothing says fun like outrage clicks!) so much she wrote a whole post about it on Boingboing . Thanks, Caroline! Come for the history of the term 'Mary Sue', stay for the epic tale of Draco and Hermione Kobra and Jemima. And also  My Immortal . Because what discussion of Mary Sues would be complete without Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven  Tara Way?

Dove are a company selling personal care products for women. You may have heard of them.  They were in the news in the summer of 2017 for a somewhat…err… misjudged  ad campaign for Baby Dove in which they talk about breastfeeding in public, and feeding crying babies in general, and somehow this has something to do with soap? I guess? I guess the idea was supposed to be “YOU GO GIRL, whatever your way is that’s totally fine [PS: buy our stuff]” but it does seem like serious ignorance over how contentious baby feeding is.  Thanks for reminding new mothers that people see breastfeeding as disgusting and gross, Dove! Thing is, either: - they really didn’t think this through, or - they’re intentionally courting controversy to sell body wash. And honestly it could be either. Because Dove doesn’t REALLY care about you. It just wants you to buy stuff. Specifically their stuff. Furthermore, Dove are owned by Unilever, the same corporation which owns, amo...

Hairsticks, A History  Let me tell you about the most wonderful (and probably oldest) hair accessory in the world:  the hair stick , also known as a  hair pin  or a  hair bodkin . Or  kanzashi , or  binyeo,  or…they have many names. You’ll see. If you’re a fan of  Janet Stephens , hairdressing archaeologist, you’ll be familiar with the term ‘bodkin’ as she uses it a lot. If you’re not a fan of Janet Stephens, whyever not? Hair sticks have been used to restrain long hair for...probably as long as humans have had long hair, to be honest. Before we had bobbles/hair ties, before we had elaborate fancy schmancy barrettes or claw clips or any of that, we had...sticks.  And because humans like pretty things which are also durable, there are some beautiful examples of very old hair sticks which are made from bone and gold and silver and all sorts. With some super fancy decoration, too. Did I hear you ask for pictures? My friend,...

I made a video about recent advances in obstetrics and fertility treatments and neonatal care. I have cunningly disguised this fact by calling it MAN VS. MACHINE: PREGNANCY WARS because c’mon, that’s a pretty good title, right? The premise is: which would be easier: growing a baby from scratch in an entirely artificial uterus (bio bags), or knocking up a natal male (male pregnancy)? (Basically it’s The Matrix vs. Junior , but hopefully less horrifying than either of those movies). Originally posted by rottentomatoes The video can be seen here: ANYWAY, I had to cut out a bunch of interesting stuff about vaginas and their structure because I couldn’t find any good pictures and also because it wasn’t really directly relevant, but here it is for your edification because VAGINAS ARE LIKE CAKES, OR MAYBE ONIONS, AND I THOUGHT YOU SHOULD KNOW BECAUSE IT’S KIND OF AWE-INSPIRING. Let's talk about vaginal structure. Vaginas come in four layers:  -...

Do you have a YouTube channel? Do you want to hold comments with particular words in them to check  (or delete) before they appear below your videos? YouTube can do that! With a feature called  Blocked Words . Blocked Words will hold any YouTube comment that contains words that you put on your list. So if you have a specific problem with, say, conspiracy theorists, you can automatically hold any comment that contains the word...I don't know, Thetans, or whatever. And then you can go look in your held comments every now and again to check that nobody's got stuck in there that shouldn't. To access Blocked Words, go to your YouTube main page, open the menu by clicking your face or whatever your icon is, and click  Creator Studio . Now look to your left. What’s that? It’s not a narwhal, but it IS the Creator Studio menu. Click  COMMUNITY . Fab. Now from the dropdown menu choose  Community Settings : And lo, what light from yonder window breaks? It i...