I got my heart inside a loom

I start my week again with no sleep. I am having a lot of trouble just existing right now.

Internet hivemind, does anyone have books to recommend for a fourteen-year-old who has just come out as bi and is looking for congenial literature? She reads science fiction and mainstream fiction but not really fantasy, so naturally most of the examples coming to my mind of bisexual main characters or societies where bisexuality is normative are in the wrong genre. I am planning to suggest Ursula K. Le Guin and Phyllis Gotlieb [edit: and Yoon Ha Lee!] and I have no idea what middle-grade/YA looks like these days.

Is it that hard to see? I just don't want to be cool

Here's how my day is going: I left the house to walk to the library and came back with blisters on both heels, because my socks had spontaneously committed suicide in transit. That is even shabbier than my usual aesthetic. I am going to need new socks. Also my heels hurt.

On the other hand, Craig Laurance Gidney is enjoying my "dense opiated prose." Any favorable comparison to Tanith Lee improves my afternoon.

These links are a mix of things.

1. I have just learned from Anu Garg that tosspot words are a particular class of compound noun rather than words that are frequently hungover. I had no idea there was a name for them in English. "What does a scarecrow have in common with a pickpocket?" feels like an outtake from Lewis Carroll.

2. I suppose it is appropriate that I read this article for Tisha B'Av. I certainly consider Netanyahu and his administration a disaster for the Jewish people.

3. I don't know that there's ever a good time to read that the roots of autism as a diagnostic category are intertwined with Nazi eugenics. I keep reminding myself that thinking of myself as a profitless and unconscionable waste of other people's resources and time (on repeat these days) is the same kind of idea and I should stop it.

4. For those unaware of the recent trash fire regarding Worldcon 76, the Daily Dot has a good overview. The con chair has just responded on Facebook and Twitter.

5. I have to say that I'm not sure if Alan Turing chained his mug to the radiator because he loved tea that much; I think he might just have hated people stealing his mug.