I married into a Catholic family and attend Mass when I can’t get out of it. Each week the priest stands up and blames secular society and gotcha media for the abuse crisis. People that want a child molester castrated and/or hanged in any other setting nod and agree that yes, clearly the Church is correct. 

One off-point point before I return to reading: the Catholic Church lies about many things, but especially never trust their census numbers. They grossly inflate their supposed membership in order to seem more important. 

Those Lit Hub pull quotes just sound like talking to my mother-in-law.

I have some concerns too, but I don’t think that study was explained adequately.  Women aren’t 16% of performers--they are 16% of the performers nominated for the big awards or appearing on the Top Whatever list. 

You’re not wrong, but pick any sex offender off your local registry and you’ll probably find their mom defending them. We often have blind spots for our kids and sure his denials carry weight with her they don’t with us. 

I haven’t been rereading as much as I used to because...stupid reason alert...I have a policy of not posting rereads on Goodreads and I want to make sure I keep my yearly total growing. I recently donated my Discworld and Miles Vorkosigan collections to a local library so that also took out my comfort rereads.

I don’t want to argue the point, because I think you’d be generally quite right about things, but the complication for me is that I live in a shithole where some places offering both Bud and Bud Light is seen as a diverse drink selection. The 60-looks-80 barfly serving as the night’s bartender used to pulling bottles…

I was friends with a hard partying crew and really lost a lot of them when I stopped drinking. We’re still not really close, but now that Serious Jobs, kids and “hangovers in your 40s are death” and the like is setting in for them, sometimes we connect a little more as they party a bit less.

Tang would be a nice change, actually. Haven’t tried that in years.

Thanks for the idea. Most of my drinking was done in the beer and shots stage of college stupidity, so I frankly don’t know enough about drinks to ask for something like that by name.

I can’t speak for the writer, but in my case, it’s a combination. I don’t want the peer pressure, yet I miss being part of the fun, and I know I can’t drink. So it just makes it unpleasant after the serious drinking begins to be on the sidelines, politely declining “just a taste” for the millionth time. 

You’re not wrong, generally, but as a non-drinker frequently provided with 4 oz coffee/tea cups and 8 oz cokes, or who has to buy a Jones soda that contains two swallows for the price friends are buying craft pints, I’m open to anything that expands the non-alc offerings. 

I’m still going to keep drinking my cranberry and soda (or sometimes replace the soda w/ Sierra Mist/7Up/whatever if I want to get crazy)...but I can really appreciate the idea of offering something different. If for no other reason, the acceptance of “not drinking in a place that serves alcohol” might just be more…

My only Kindle complaint is that, back when I first got one, it had built in free data access so that I could just hit “next in the series?” and get a fresh book wherever I was on the road. 

Gideon the Ninth surprised me by being a lot more fun than the blurbs led me to believe. 

spaceships: Jessie Mihalko or KG Wagers (tho last one got a bit dark) on the space opera. Ann Leckie if I want to get deep.

I read a ton of lightweight genre stuff. Space opera, romances, cozy mysteries, etc, with occasional sporadic dives into celebrity (preferable D list or lower) memoirs. I used to worry that I wasn’t using my education and cultivating my brain or whatever, but then every “serious read” I tried was (1) dull and (2)…

I’m always curious about “independent investigators” because usually the “independent” means “not an employee of the company but an employee of a law firm being paid by the company.” In a couple cases I was involved in when I was doing consulting with nonprofit boards, their recommendation was usually along the lines…

I’d probably have kept playing (my non-football sport) if that were the case for me. Kudos to that coach.

Having worked at a bunch of colleges, the story of the athletes and their views still resonates with me. I’ve known a lot of kids that got an entirely useless degree because, while it was largely covered by a scholarship, their selections were limited by coaches/administrators. I’ve even seen DIII coaches, with no…