Sara > Recent Status Updates

The Keiko Project!!!!! 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

This was written by a journalist which is amazing, but pretty much the entire part about being worried about an oil spill is now outdated (yay! Not a concern really anymore!)

I think I can summarize this entire book with this passage:

“Though she had fought back against Tomas, against the Cauldron, against the King of Hybern, they had all HAPPENED to her. She had survived, but she had been helpless and afraid.
Not today.
Today, she would happen to HIM.”

This is making me wanna move to seattle BAD 😆

Fun fact: the words “orca” and “orc” share the same root Latin origin. Orca orcinus’ name roughly translates to “demon from hell” 😆 😆

Wow learned 3 cool things in 5 pages:
1. Orca culture revolves around food bc they have less blubber
2. “Orcas’ behavior is almost totally governed by cultural conditions and hardly at all by what we were taught in school about instincts and stimulus response and animal behavior in general”
3. No signs of internal strife in orca cultures - No signs of discipline or jousting for position within the hierarchies!

“Home, for these whales, is not a place. Their home is each other.” 😭

I picked this up hoping to learn Orca 101 and to find some resources for the topics I wanted to dig deeper on. That’s already majorly paid off!! Maybe I should be an odondocete neuroscientist in my next life 😆

Inconsolable oh my god 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Nooooo I knew a tragedy was coming but if it’s an infertility story I’ll be disappointed

I think my favorite part of this book is that there are some things that I had previously thought the LGBTQ community would unanimously support, like drag, or the repeal of don’t ask don’t tell. But this book talks about conflicting opinions from different groups within the LGBTQ community. That level of nuance makes me feel like by reading this book, I’m actually taking a graduate level course. 😍

If they cut Ben in the movie i RIOT. I cried “why not go to the wedding? It’s better than a funeral”

Henry telling his dad about how often he sees his mom destroyed me

Clare realizing Henry is kind of a loser? Love love love love love

I like how unlike other sci fi stories the MMC is just a guy who stumbled into this. His many flaws make him more realistic and interesting to me over like “im a genius and i discovered time travel” kind of stuff

“Do you ever miss him?”

“Every day. Every minute.”

“Every minute. Yes. It’s that way, isn’t it?”

In addition to the horrific descriptions of women, the science isn’t even right!!

Charlie’s condition is caused by phenylketoneuria, which the Dr. says is a mystery. It was explained and mostly cured a decade before this was written. Maybe pre-internet the author couldn’t get that info, fine.

Now they describe the gyri and sulci of the mouse brain - all mouse brains are flat!! Come on!! Easily available info

As a woman and as a scientist I just cannot care about this protagonist. Relatedly… Deeply disgusted by how the women are portrayed. “There was no place to enter. No street, no room, no woman” SIR????????? 🤢🤢🤢🤢 BOO HOO CRY MORE

Now we’re on don’t ask don’t tell. Damn.
By this point I’ve heard so many stories of our institutions completely failing queer people, and I’ve become almost desensitized. But this story happened in 2004, and the recency is a shock to the system!

This actually does read like long-form creepypasta… AND IT’S VERY EFFECTIVE IM SCARED

My internal monologue is just “GETTTTT OUTTT!!!!!!!!” Also can’t believe how well the author nailed the anxious inner monologue, like it’s truly eerily accurate 😆

I cried when Sharon Kowalski came home 🥲🥲🥲🥲

“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” - Harvey Milk

Fascinating to hear the process by which homosexuality was removed from the DSM! Namely aggressively protesting the annual APA meeting (!!??!!)

Such a beautiful rollercoaster im emotionally wrecked at the bagel shop

This section about the intersection of feminism and queerness is really wild to me. Drag being offensive to women, particularly queer women, is definitely not a concept I expected to find in this specific book! History!!

God bless Frank Kameny