More thoughts on fiction:

[conuly]

If your two protagonists have spent their entire lives fearing and hating each others' group/race/nation/religion/family, and both had lost their childhoods and beloved family members to this mutual hatred, it's probably going to take them more than three weeks to move from loathing to love. Even if those are three very intense weeks. Even if they're fated, magically empathic, and/or teenagers. I feel like this is going to take at least a few months, and even then, they'll be really, really conflicted. (Especially if one of them personally led an attack on the other's hometown. I mean, really?)

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Encryption Lava Lamps

Zoos Are Giving Amazon-Style Reviews Of Their Animals And It’s Hilariously Adorable

Forget Pi Day. We should be celebrating Tau Day

How royal jelly helps honeybee larvae defy gravity and become queens

A Guide To North Indian Vs. South Indian Bridal Makeup (Video)

The Swedish Coffee (and Tea) Experiment

Groups want judges to stop courthouse immigration arrests

These Photos Captured What Happened When the United States Started to Ration Shoes During WWII

Even plastic art decays, but museum curators are on the case

FDA begins push to cut addictive nicotine in cigarettes

Toys 'R' Us closure leaves void for suppliers, endangers 30,000 jobs

Today's gun-control debate has echoes of 1934

UNICEF's Good News About Child Marriage Isn't Quite As Good As It Sounds

Afghan baby named Donald Trump proves divisive

People are stranded in 'transit deserts' in dozens of US cities

Men and women have opposite genetic alterations in depression

The Case Against Jaywalking Laws

Oklahoma mother will go to jail for marrying her daughter

Aging Japan: Prisons cope with swelling ranks of elderly inmates

Prison death highlights challenges of assigning cellmates

National data says substance abuse is on the decline. These charts tell a different story.

Blacks Were Enslaved Well into the 1960s (This article is about debt bondage, which is still widespread throughout the world including in this country.)

Inside the Right-Wing YouTube Empire That’s Quietly Turning Millennials Into Conservatives (Mother Jones made the odd choice to host some of those videos. Given the retrograde disaster that is their comments section, I think this is profoundly unwise.)

As America Changes, Some Anxious Whites Feel Left Behind (They could do with less whining and more introspection.)

For many Syrians, the story of the war began with graffiti in Dara'a

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

Love the #rateaspecies link! Totally need to share ith with my daughter the zoo volunteer.

Also, I'm really amused by how many of these specific animals I know personally or have at least met :) A totally agree with Monterey Aquarium's octopus rating -- it's my favorite exhibit there; I knew EXACTLY what the "color not as shown" critter from Cal Academy was; and we visited the Oregon zoo a few months ago, so I got to see the otter and the bat (or its buddies) too :)

[conuly]

So long as those ratings are accurate :)

[hamsterwoman]

Haha, pretty accurate, I'd say! :D Very helpful reviews ;)

[jesse_the_k]

Particularly tasty links today! The Tau advocates speak truth: finally explained why I had so much trouble with trigonometry.

And consider how the upper-Midwest Swedes make coffee today. They frequently boil the grounds in a percolator for hour—it’s not only a beverage it’s a paint thinner.

I have to take issue with 5e transit oasis definition: most cities start with a downtown, and bus lines tend to go (meet, and cross) there.

[conuly]

That coffee sounds awful D:

[8hyenas]

One of my favorite love stories (maybe my only favorite love story?) was one where he was very religious, and she was secular. It didn't work out, they didn't even try. I was so relieved to get to the end, for them to have been together would've been very out of character. As someone would have to compromise...

[8hyenas]

oh no. i'm going to comment about the incest story. please note i've only read the ONE article that you've linked to.
*The article doesn't specify if there was a sexual relationship in either of the woman marriages to her children* <----

it seems possible to me...

1) The woman lost her kids to the state when they were very young. They were adopted out (thus her not being on the birth certificate).

2) They reunited as adults, but were not legal family.

3) To adopt an adult costs around $2000. (Not to mention the kids probably already had adoptive parents)

4) A marriage is $50.

I take back all of this if sex was involved.

(I wish to g-d the U.S. had more flexible laws regarding who is family. R. would do great with me, her birthmom, and my mom as parents. And how do you reconnect with birth family after being adopted. What about inheritance etc.? Arg! And why isn't my child allowed to become a member of my tribe?!)

[conuly]

Okay, but there has to be some other way to formalize their relationship than all this. I mean....

[8hyenas]

oh yeah for sure, this was a terrible plan.

[mama_kestrel]

My first thought on pi? How do you bake a tau?

[conuly]

MTE.

I suppose we could make tau pies, but if they're anything like cow pies I think I'll pass.

[brokenallbroken]

Also my thought! Tau may be a superior number, but pi is much better pastry.

[shadowkat]

Romantic fiction, or so I've found, is very seldom logical.

Just tried reading a book in which the hero had deliberately, with his friends, ran the heroine off a small cliff with a truck. She barely survived. Two years later he pops up at her high school and they begin to start a romance. And I'm thinking, eh, restraining order? Hello. There's no way in heck she'd go anywhere near this guy or he'd be permitted near her. He tried to kill her.

I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for some things...but YA and New Adult contemporary romance novels sort of push me past my limits.

Another one? The heroine knows absolutely nothing about caregiving for people paralyzed from the neck down. He's wealthy. They live in England. HE's been suicidal. The parents hire this girl, who doesn't have a degree and has no common sense to care for their son, who is completely paralyzed and is suicidal during the day with no assistance. She's a small thing, can't lift weights. Not in any shape.

My suspension of disbelief jumped out the window and went screaming down the block after the first fifty pages. But it was a best seller and made into a movie, and lots of people loved it. So apparently many readers don't care.

[conuly]

It's not a romance, either. It's a fantasy book, and all the fantasy parts are great. Wonderful.

But why oh why do all the authors feel that their characters need to pair up!?

And I'm thinking, eh, restraining order? Hello. There's no way in heck she'd go anywhere near this guy or he'd be permitted near her. He tried to kill her.

FFS, what on earth was the writer thinking?

[shadowkat]

But why oh why do all the authors feel that their characters need to pair up!?

If it wasn't self-published or non-traditionally published, it may not be the author's fault. Publishers/acquisitions editors or literary agents in lieu of copy-editing, decide to make insane plot suggestions for marketing purposes. They destroyed the book "The Horse Whisperer" -- which had originally been more about horse whispering, by feeling a need to put in the "romance". And they tried to do that with me, when I submitted a novel to them, I told them to go to hell and published it myself. (They wanted me to turn it into a murder mystery/thriller with the two leads falling in love and I said, that's not the story I'm writing and there's a million books out there like that already, why would I add another? )

Sigh. Stupid publishing industry has been ruined by evil marketing people.

Also, sometimes, it's fandom. I've seen a lot of fanfic writers get roped into doing that when they shouldn't. Also has happened with professional writers who go by what they see their fans clamoring for (a lot television serial writers), and book serial writers fall into those traps.

Rule #1 for romances -- if the romance doesn't further the plot or the characters, don't do it. Rule #2 - ignore the fans, they don't see the whole story like the creator does, just the portion of it they are relating to or care about.

FFS, what on earth was the writer thinking?

I think she was going for a bully redemption story and star-crossed lovers. But it just doesn't work. More time needs to pass for that to work. Also the bullying shouldn't have been that bad. Just teasing is fine, but running the heroine over with a truck and almost killing her???

[conuly]

There is a real market for fun books with no romance whatsoever. Why can't they just see that, stupid publishing people?

[shadowkat]

Well, romance does sell.

But...agree. It's not like there isn't a market for people who don't like it. (Most men despise romance and prefer books without it...so there's that.)