Monday Cup Of Links #36 - Jhansi’s Heir, Ohlone Mealkits, the real James Bond, and Slate Star Codex
Support Pseudonymity!
Happy Monday!
It’s been two weeks since I posted on here. I was busy with a writing assignment that took a lot of mental effort (which I might share here sometime in the future), and work deadlines, and unfortunately, this Substack was the first casualty.
Work on the novel has stalled as well. I’ve hit the messy middle and perfectionism has kicked in. I thought I could finish it by the end of this month, but if I get even 15,000 words done, that would be great in itself. I need to reread Jon Acuff’s Finish - Give Yourself The Gift Of Done, a most excellent book about overcoming perfectionism and completing tasks, and get back on the horse.
It’s frustrating because I thought I had it all figured out with a writing practice. It’s clearly not resilient to interruptions.
But maybe having to send you people a new thousand words every week might snap me out of this.
Onto our links!
The heroine of 1857 was Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi, who the British dethroned using the insidious doctrine of lapse - if a king died without biological heirs, the kingdom was taken over by the British. In her case, after her husband’s death, the British refused to recognize her adopted son Damodar Rao as heir, and tried to take over the kingdom and pension them off. She fought back. With the infant Damodar on her back in the battlefield! Otherwise, there was a big danger the British would kidnap him. What happened to the little boy? Well, here’s some of his memoirs detailing his struggle after the Rani was martyred in battle. He passed away in 1906, but his descendants live on in Indore to this day.
Cafe Ohlone, the popup restaurant featuring Ohlone food in Berkeley, has closed thanks to the virus. But fear not, they are working to make mealkits and takeout! I for one am looking forward to this. It will certainly be easier to go grab this than how in the Before Times I’d have to plan around work to head across the Bay in the limited windows they were open. In trying to eat better and more local, and grow plants sustainably, I think taking to native foods and recipe on a large scale is important.
The story that’s shaken a portion of the internet - Slate Star Codex deleted his blog! Where do I even begin to talk about this? I had only occasionally read blogposts from this blog, and they were brilliant. There’s a whole community around SSC. TL;DR: Scott Alexander got a lot of the COVID predictions right early on. The NYT wanted to do a story on him and the SSC community. He agreed to talk to them. They said they would have to reveal his full name, though they are completely fine referring to Banksy and members of the Taliban by their pseudonyms. He decided there was no story without the blog, and deleted all his posts, because there were real world implications if his name was easily googleable.
More than a decade ago, I too had a blog that had a community around it. Back then, I was an awkward young woman who didn’t know the power of the internet, and had no idea who was reading me - I thought it was just a handful of friends. While I took enough care to not really share much and not put pictures of myself out there, it got a little too creepy when people began to show up to places I was at, or divined my phone number. And towards the end, it became a big factor in someone stalking me. While Internet meetups are a commonplace fool’s errand these days, it definitely was the outer limits of normal back then, especially since I had no idea about all these fans I’d cultivated, and who thought they knew me so well because they read my blog. All through, I never stopped writing on there, and only quit when I stopped having much to say. All this is to say I understand the importance of pseudonymity. Scott Alexander has actual meetups and has published his blogposts under his actual name, and probably doesn’t fear weirdos the way I do. But given a commenter got SWATted, and given his career depends on his patients knowing as little about him as possible, it’s disingenuous of the NYT to doxx him despite his requests. This has convinced me to never talk to reporters, not that they are lining up to talk to me right now.
In general, it’s creeping me out how the pseudonymous internet is sort of dying off, and you’re expected to put your real name out there more and more. Or at the very least, social media corporations ask for your real name, real ID, real face, and real phone number. I don’t like it like this.Ian Fleming didn’t get the name James Bond out of nowhere; he was impressed by the name of another author, who had nothing to do with spies or intrigue. This is the story of him and Ian Fleming.
GIF of the week: When you’re the ‘I’ in the Pixar logo.